


A Trace of All That Was

by leavinghope



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America Sam Wilson, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Sam Wilson, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 36,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22473013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leavinghope/pseuds/leavinghope
Summary: Bucky Barnes has to deal with the pain of watching Steve Rogers leave and return as an old man. Sam Wilson has to learn how to become Captain America when he had not asked for the role. How could they both have been so wrong about Steve? How could the man they both thought they knew have let them down so completely?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson
Comments: 356
Kudos: 513





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [ NurseDarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NurseDarry/pseuds/NurseDarry) for being kind enough to beta this story. The story benefited from the feedback. Any mistakes are my own.
> 
> And also so much gratitude to [em_dibujsb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_dibujsb/pseuds/em_dibujsb) for the beautiful piece of art in Chapter 14. The result far surpasses anything I could have imagined.
> 
> A slightly different version of Chapter 2 first appeared as the standalone story [_Not So Pretty Now_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18628690) written and posted the weekend _Avengers: Endgame_ came out. I realized I had more to say in this universe (ie, more anger to work out over the treatment of these characters), and this story is the result.

Bucky Barnes had done his best to prepare himself for a life without Steve Rogers. Hell, he’d been practicing that since pulling Steve from the Potomac, since the long vigils by Steve’s sickbed throughout their youth. But when Bucky saw an aged Steve sitting on the bench overlooking the lake instead of reappearing on the time travel platform, he felt a crushing sense of loss and disappointment. That’s when he knew somewhere, deep down, he had hoped Steve, his Steve, would return. 

That’s when he knew he could not stay.

He turned away after Steve handed the shield to Sam Wilson. Bucky was happy for Sam; he would make a great Captain America. Sam was a natural leader, charismatic and savvy. In the gaping absence left by the deaths of Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov, and, well, Stevenow, in a way, Sam would fill the void more capably than most.

Bucky quietly approached Bruce Banner, who still seemed concerned the machine had malfunctioned and was well on the way to blaming himself. Bucky did not know the man, but Steve had always praised his gentleness and bravery, and Bucky did not want to see him suffer after all the man had been through.

“This was his choice, Dr. Banner.”

Bruce stopped his frenetic inspection of the platform to look at Bucky’s face, and he saw the truth there on tragic display **.**

“You knew?”

Bucky didn’t trust his voice and knew his understanding of Steve’s decision would be difficult to convey, so he merely nodded.

“Wow. I didn’t think Steve would do something so…” Bruce broke off and quickly looked away from Bucky. “It’s just a surprise, you know?”

Bucky could not bear the pity directed at him, even with such kind intentions, and suddenly knew what he had to do. From somewhere in his past, he summoned up the appearance of confidence. “It’s going to take awhile for him to get used to being back with all of us. I think I’ll give him some space. Help Sam learn how to be Cap, you know?” And for good measure, “I don’t want Steve to have to worry about me.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

“I’ll just head back to Wakanda for awhile, see how I can help the recovery efforts there, and get my stuff. I’ll see you back at the Compound to help with the rebuild in a few weeks.”

As Bucky started to walk away, Bruce said, “Aren’t you going to stick around to talk to Steve?”

Bucky risked one final glance back to where Steve and Sam were talking. He caught a flash of gold on Steve’s left ring finger. “We said everything there was to say last night.”

Bucky trusted the man in front of him enough to know that Bruce would read whatever he needed into that sentence. They shook hands, and Bucky walked back towards the lane where Steve’s motorcycle was parked. Steve and Bucky had ridden it together to the platform earlier that morning. That ride seemed eons ago in Bucky’s mind. He pushed the bike far enough up the road that the engine noise wouldn’t allow time for Sam to catch up to him, and then he drove as fast as he could, as far away as he could, for as long as he could.

The five years in the Soul World may have gone by in an instant for the Dusted, but it had left a physical toll. Bucky tired more quickly than he’d hoped, and he pulled off the turnpike at what he knew to be a moderately-priced chain motel. He patted down the jacket Pepper Potts had kindly given to him for the funeral and found a wallet with cash and cards. He’d be able to afford room and board for awhile, while he drove to an as yet undetermined destination. It wouldn’t be Wakanda, and it couldn’t be the Compound. Not yet, at least, if ever.

All he had was the bike and the clothes on his back, but the clerk at the reception desk didn’t even blink an eye. He wondered if drifters were more common now than they had been five years ago. Bucky realized one of his top priorities had to be learning about what had happened in the world while fifty percent of the population was gone. An itch developed under his skin, in a positive way. Finding a way to be useful, especially in a chaotic world which had just lost its best defenders, could help guide him in this undreamt-of future he now lived in, one without Steve at his side.

He grabbed water and granola bars from the small store in the lobby, and then made his way to his room. A moment of cognitive dissonance caused him to hesitate in the doorway longer than he would normally consider to be safe. He forced himself to enter the room.

It was the artwork. Hotel artwork was always so mundane, inoffensive, repetitive. The uniformity of the artwork in hotels throughout the States had shaken his sense of reality after he’d pulled Steve from the Potomac. After a few days of sleeping rough, he’d braved a hotel with his stolen Hydra funds. That first night was fine. It was the days after, at other hotels, each one so similar to the previous, that exacerbated his fragile memories of being wiped again and again. Being in this room made him long for his cottage in Wakanda, look fondly back upon his flat in Bucharest. He’d carved out little bits of home in those places. But now he was on the run again, and he had no home. Steve had been his true home, but his Steve appeared to have been replaced by one who’d lived a life without his best friend at his side.

Bucky shook his head to clear it of such dismal thoughts. He may not have a home, but he had a life, a future. He needed to focus on that.

After a quick security check and drawing the blinds against the night outside, he settled down to the small desk and used the thin notepad and pen provided to make a list.

_Disable any electronic tracking devices._

_Eat granola bars and drink water._

_Shower._

_Sleep._

_Eat free motel breakfast._

_Ditch phone._

_Obtain more cash._

_Ditch cards._

Bucky hesitated, then crossed out that last line. His gut told him he could trust Pepper, that she did not have any ulterior motives, but was simply helping out someone in need in the simplest way she could right now.

_Detail bike._

_Obtain phone, laptop, backpack, underwear, jeans, long-sleeved shirts, gloves, small insulated food carrier, food, water._

_Drive._

_Help recovery efforts._

Bucky always felt better when he had a plan, even if it wasn’t as specific as he’d otherwise prefer. An abundance of caution caused him to shred the unused pages of the notepad and flush them down the toilet. Not that he thought anyone would come after him tonight. Sam would be freaking out about the tremendous life-altering decision Steve had made on his behalf, Bruce would be checking and rechecking the platform, Pepper would be with those close to her, others would be returning home after the funeral, and Nick Fury would probably be debriefing Steve. Assuming Steve had stuck around. Who knows where he had been before appearing on that bench?

“Not your concern anymore, Barnes.” He let out a self-deprecating sigh. “Talking to myself already? Alright, let’s own this. Get to your list, Barnes.”

Within an hour, he lay in bed, staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. Light filtered through the gaps in the curtains. Used to both the quiet of his cottage in Wakanda and the study hum of cities like Birnin Zana, the unsteady rhythm of random cars passing by kept him on edge. Instead of falling asleep, his last conversation with Steve repeated in his mind.

*** 

It happened just the night before. Steve had pulled Bucky aside. “I’m going to return the Stones to their appropriate times and locations.”

“Who is going with you?”

“This is a solo mission.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, no. It’s bad enough there will be two of me in the timeline. Don’t want to complicate it any more than I have to.”

Complicate was not the verb Bucky would have chosen. And Steve wasn’t looking Bucky in the eyes, one of his classic tells. Steve wasn’t being honest, and Bucky feared he knew the reason. “Is it tempting to stay in the past?”

Steve shrugged, a casual affectation belied by the overall tension in his body. “It was weird to see myself in2012 **.** Kinda wanted to punch myself in the face.”

Bucky laughed, as he knew Steve hoped he would, but still asked, “How about 1970? Anything complicated there?”

Because once Bucky heard about the time heist, he’d looked into the locales and times, and knew Steve may have crossed Peggy Carter’s path. He wondered if Steve would talk about it if he had. 

“People didn’t recognize Captain America, but they were good at their jobs. They knew I didn’t belong on base. We almost got caught.”

Bucky waited silently for Steve to continue.

“I saw Peggy. She didn’t see me. I ducked into an office to hide for a moment, and it was hers. She was in the next room.” Steve smiled wistfully. “She was beautiful. In charge, full of purpose. I was grateful to have the chance to see her in her element.”

“And now you’re going back in time again.”

“Yeah.”

Bucky thought of how the missed opportunity with Peggy haunted Steve. How alone Steve had felt in this century. How he’d always wanted a large family when he was younger, and how he thought his duties prevented him from pursuing that life. “I know you’ll want to stay with Peggy.” 

Steve bowed his head.

Swallowing down the urge to beg Steve to stay with him, Bucky reassured him instead. “It’s okay to want that, Steve.”

Steve kept his gaze towards the floor and asked quietly, “Isn’t there anything about the past you’d want to change, if you could?”

Bucky thought of the years of torture he had experienced, all the lives he had taken, all the violence both inflicted by and on him. Shouldn’t he want to rewrite that history? Was changing his past something he should hope for now? Finally, he shook his head. “No. I mean, I wish I’d never hurt anyone, of course. But I’ve worked too hard to get back to where I am, and I’ve come close to becoming human again. I wish it had all never happened, but it did, and I’m still here.” Bucky was surprised how true the words felt as they left his mouth.

Steve finally looked up at Bucky and smiled. “I’m so proud of you, Buck.”

Bucky’s heart swelled at the praise. He feared he’d never stop hungering for Steve’s approval. “I’m proud of you, too, Stevie. But you don’t have to be Captain America anymore. You can stop.”

“Maybe I will.”

And the smile on Steve’s face was the one he’d worn when thinking of Peggy. It was then Bucky knew.

Steve was never coming back. Not his Steve.

***

One brief hug, one unreturned _miss you_. That was all that remained.

Bucky didn’t know how he could be so exhausted and so awake at the same time. 

A text alert sounded from his phone. Not the first text since he’d left Bruce, Sam, and Steve by the lakeside, but the first coded to Steve alone. He had double- and triple-checked that all location services on the phone were turned off, and he planned on ditching the phone in the morning. Last chance to make a clean getaway. He had to tailor his responses just right. Might as well start now.

One text from Pepper. 

_Thank you for your compassion. It is more than I deserve. My sympathy and gratitude to you and your daughter._

A handful of texts from Shuri. 

_I’m fine. Would you please send a new phone to our drop-off location? I’ll explain soon. Just be patient with me, please, and give me some time. Love you, my little sister._

Several from Sam. 

_Heading back to Wakanda for a few days to grab a few things. Then I’ll stay with Steve awhile. Help him adjust back to our time. Give us a few weeks of privacy? And thanks for checking up on me. Maybe you’re not so bad after all._

One from Steve.

_Happy you had the life you wanted. Truly. I’ll be at the Compound. Somebody has to keep Captain America in line, and that’s usually been me. Please give me some time to adjust to my new sidekick. Take care of yourself, buddy._

Tears in his eyes, Bucky crushed the phone in his vibranium hand. No tracking devices, surprisingly. Knowing it would be impossible to sleep now, he took a shower to loosen his muscles and perhaps even relax enough to be able to sleep later. As the water flowed over his body, he once again marveled at the abundance of hot water in this century, that he never had to re-experience the cold baths of his youth or the punishing cold showers of the Soldier. As he used one towel for his hair and another to dry his body, he remembered threadbare clothes and unheated floors and unsealed windows, and he reveled in the warmth of the bathroom. And as he tamped down his sorrow and crawled under the covers to pursue a few hours of sleep, he focused on the good things the immediate future held for him: a clean bed to sleep in, breakfast in the morning, enough money to get by, the concern and comfort of friends, the freedom to go wherever he needed to heal this latest blow to his heart. 

Bucky had a plan.

And he had a long journey ahead.

He wondered where it would take him.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam Wilson and Maria Hill approached the cabin by the lake for the first time since Tony Stark’s funeral a month previous. Pepper and her little girl Morgan had returned to New York City to restart life closer both to Stark Industries and support for the newly single mother. When they moved, Pepper offered the home to Steve, a comfortable, secure, and isolated place to live out his final years in peace. Sam and Maria had acquiesced to Steve’s desire for some space, but were each ecstatic in their own way to finally receive an invitation to visit him.

Steve greeted them at the front door when he heard them drive up. Checked button-down shirt, khaki pants, serene expression… Steve looked every bit as happy, healthy, and relaxed as Sam had hoped. As he and Maria walked up to the porch, Sam was surprised nobody was at Steve’s side. He did not think Barnes would allow Steve out of his sight for long after that time-travel stunt, on top of losing time while in the Soul World.

“So good to see you.” Steve’s warm voice felt as much a hug as his arms when he embraced both Sam and Maria. He escorted the two into his living room, where they sat together on a comfortable couch as Steve went into his kitchen. Sam looked around the room, curious for clues about this older Steve. Shelves overflowed with books, and an easel with the beginning of a landscape painting rested in front of a large picture window, a table of brushes and paint tubes next to it.

“Looks so… retired.” Maria’s voice conveyed a level of discomfort which amused Sam.

“What else did you expect from Grandpa here?” He could not keep the laughter out of his voice.

“Well, he used to work out for six hours each day and stack spare punching bags in storage for fun, so…”

Steve came back into the room with a tray of cookies and lemonade. He placed them on the coffee table and distributed the snacks with a satisfied look on his face. Steve then settled into a comfy wingback chair. “Enjoy.”

Sam and Maria both eyed the cookies with skepticism. Sam said, “These look suspiciously homemade.”

“I finally had the time to learn how to cook. Food is now safe in my hands.”

All laughed and chatted amiably about mundane things, like weather and politics and the recovery effort. Eventually, Steve asked, “How is the team?”

The truth was, there wasn’t much of a team. Sam responded, “We’re getting there. It’s hard without you, Steve. Nat is gone, Tony is gone. Thor and Danvers are somewhere amongst the stars. Clint, like you, is out-of-action. Rhodey is holding down the fort in DC. And I’m a newbie at this. I’m more of a soldier than a leader.”

“You’ve got good people around you. Lean on them.”

“Oh, don’t worry, he is.” Maria teased Sam gently. “Seriously, though, Steve. We could use your guidance.”

“No, I’m done. I left this behind long ago.” Steve smiled wistfully. “Bucky was a good leader. The Howling Commandos followed him as much as they did me. Take his advice.”

Maria swept her gaze around her surroundings, something Sam knew she could not prevent herself from doing with regularity. “So, where is Barnes?”

“Excuse me?” Steve furrowed his brow, as if he didn’t understand the question.

Sam laughed. “Barnes? The guy you just mentioned? I’m surprised he’s left your side this afternoon. Considering how you said he used to worry about you as a kid, I bet he’s all over your geriatric ass to take care of yourself.”

Sam felt his smile fade as Steve looked even more confused.

“Bucky isn’t here.”

“What?” Maria tensed at Sam’s side.

“I was hoping he’d arrive with you.”

Sam and Maria exchanged nervous looks. Sam said, “Steve, I haven’t seen Barnes since the day you came back from the past.”

Maria added. “Nobody has had any contact from him.”

Steve ran a hand through his grey hair. “He told me he would be with all of you at the Compound.”

Sam felt his stomach clench with concern. “Jesus, he told me to give you guys a few weeks before reaching out, because you had so much catching up to do.”

Steve spoke softly. “He said he would help you ease into the role of carrying the shield.”

Sam sent off a group text, querying Bucky’s location from various members of the team, including Bucky himself. “Dammit, he played us. He has a month’s head start.”

Maria stood up and began to efficiently give orders over the phone. “We need to keep this quiet, out of the media and off official channels. We’ve lost contact with Barnes. Light touch, use-of-force when necessary. All eyes on lookout for the Winter Soldier.”

“Don’t call him that.”

Maria and Sam looked at a very angry Steve, who continued to speak furiously. “He’s Bucky Barnes, not the Winter Soldier. I may not know where he is, but I know that.”

“I’ll be there ASAP.” Maria ended her call and addressed Steve. “What else would you want us to do? Barnes is one of the best snipers in history, a legendary assassin, and he’s known to have episodes of susceptibility to mind control. We can’t just treat this like an ordinary missing person case. The agents need to know what they’re up against, and that might be the Winter Soldier.” Maria’s tone was firm, even if her face was kind.

Steve said, “He doesn’t deserve to be hunted down.”

“I can’t be one hundred percent sure of that.” Maria looked at Sam. “Will you be able to get back to the Compound on your own?”

“Yeah. Just leave my wings here.”

“I’ll keep you posted, Sam.” Maria fixed Steve with a glare. “You stay put. I mean it. I’ll know if you step one foot outside this house.”

“Look…” but Steve was interrupted as Maria turned and left.

Sam gulped down more lemonade and cookies, realizing he might not have another chance to eat any time soon. The silence was broken when Steve said, “I just don’t know why Bucky would leave.”

“Really, Steve? That’s how you’re going to play this.”

Sam suddenly filled with an anger he hadn’t realized was lingering below his surface. He’d been so proud to be asked to carry the Captain America mantle that he hadn’t given thought to what Steve had done.

“You left him first. You left us.”

Steve set his jaw in that stubborn line Sam had grown to know so well. “But I was only gone for ten seconds  for you .”

“And came back seventy years older. Steve, I know you felt like you were robbed of your past, and I sympathize. But you robbed Barnes and all of your friends of the possibility of those future decades with you.”

“Bucky knew what I was planning to do. He supported and encouraged my choice.”

“Of course, he did. You have always been the most important person in his life. Do you think he would ever have tried to prevent you from pursuing your own happiness?”

Steve bowed his head, obscuring his face from Sam’s view.

“And maybe he didn’t want to know what you spent your decades doing, hmm? Were you still Captain America? Did you defeat Hydra?” Once started, Sam couldn’t stop. “Did you rally for civil rights? Argue to end the laws against miscegenation? Did you speak out for choice and LGBT rights?”

Sam felt a few tears spill down his face. “Did you save him? Or did you leave him to be tortured and abused for years while you got everything you wanted?”

Sam hadn’t realized he was yelling until Steve flinched. “Shit, Steve. I’m sorry. That was out of line.”

Steve sat silently twisting the simple gold ring on his left hand, a symbol of the life he had lived in that ten-second span. Sam wondered what history Steve had overwritten for the woman he went back in time to marry. Sam couldn’t help but think about the fact Bucky did not have a flesh left hand to place a wedding band on.

“Look, no matter what you did in that timeline, Barnes lost you in this one. We all did. Those few seconds you were gone aren’t equal to the time you lived without him, man, and how much time he’ll miss with you once you pass on. And I have to admit, I wouldn’t have turned down some training from Cap in his prime to help me take on this role.” Sam shook his head, weary from the outburst of anger, but still needing to speak. “I know I said you could use a little more selfishness in your life. But not like this. I never expected this.”

When Steve remained silent, Sam said, “I should start looking for Barnes. Any idea where he might be?”

“No. Certainly nothing you couldn’t already guess.”

“Well, now he’s on his own, and if we don’t find him soon, I really don’t see a way of keeping law enforcement out of this.” A thought occurred to Sam. “Do I dare hope a pardon was granted while we were in the Soul World?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

Sam sighed. “Damn. Well, I’m Captain America now, so I guess Bucky Barnes is my responsibility.”

“Sam, you have to know, I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“Seems to me if you had given a bit more thought to your decision, you should have known.”

“But why would Bucky leave? You saw him. He was himself. He was healthy. He was happy.” Steve sounded completely befuddled. Or, more likely, oblivious.

Sam had his suspicions about Bucky and his reasons to leave. He had a feeling they were more complicated and sentimental than Steve had ever suspected. Bucky had remained by Steve’s side in World War II even though he’d been offered the opportunity to ship home. He’d snapped himself out of decades of hell at the sound of Steve’s voice. He’d worked hard at his recovery on the run and in Wakanda, in ways that wouldn’t hurt Steve. And he’d let Steve go, after finally getting him back. Sam had a feeling that Bucky had been in love with Steve for the better part of a century. A devoted, selfless love that had left him alone and in pain, no matter how happy for Steve he may have truly been.

Sam couldn’t say any of that if Bucky hadn’t, but there were other truths he could say.

“I can’t claim to know how any of this quantum time-travel shit works. All I know is that Barnes didn’t miraculously develop a real left arm and good memories when you returned. So, maybe he’s out in the world dealing with the fact his best friend lived a happy seventy years while he still has nightmares of every kill he was forced to make during that same time.”

Sam knew the words stung, but he honestly couldn’t bring himself to care right then. Barnes needed help, and he didn’t even know it yet. The room was filled with the sound of Steve trying to control his breathing, but Sam didn’t have the patience to soothe him. He stood up and made for the door. “Thanks for the cookies, Steve.”

“He isn’t the Winter Soldier anymore. He doesn’t hurt people.”

Sam opened the front door to grab his wings from where Maria had left them on the doorstep. “I don’t believe Barnes is doing anything wrong. I think he’s running away from you, and I understand that. But I have to bring him back before he gets hurt.”

Steve didn’t look up when he asked, “Will you let me know when you find him?”

Sam snapped his wings harness into place. “Only if I have his permission.”

Steve looked up then, as Sam walked out the door without another word.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam was participating in an Avengers co-sponsored food distribution program at City College of New York when he got the text. These events were open to the public, and Sam learned quickly that folks were more likely to accept charity if they could mask their need with taking the opportunity to gawk at the new Captain America. People recognized him, even dressed in casual civilian clothes. He wasn’t used to being called “Cap” yet, but it felt good. He had planned to stay longer, but if Maria interrupts when she knows Sam is busy, it must be important. After making his apologies to the student organizers, he texted Maria an ETA.

One positive thing about the Avengers operating out of Stark Industries’ headquarters was living in New York City again. While the facility upstate was being rebuilt, the New York office allowed Sam to be near some of his family and near the many organizations helping to restore the world to what it had been before half its population vanished for five years. Improving upon that world, hopefully. But being in the city also meant being expected to respond to last minute meeting requests from Nick Fury.

Sam walked into the communications center right as Maria was tearing her headphones off and throwing them onto the desk.

“Things going that well?”

“That was Secretary Ross, wanting an updateon our search for Barnes.” Maria pointedly looked up at Sam. “Would you happen to have an update on his location?”

Sam thought about the Wakandan phone which had shown up on his doorstep a few days ago. He thought about the one contact programmed into it, nameless, and the one message containing the middle finger emoji from that contact. He was pretty sure Bucky was alive, but could honestly say, “I have no idea where he is.”

“That’s too bad. I’m worried about him.” Bruce Banner had entered the room not long after Sam. 

It was still a bit of a shock to see this new amalgam of Banner and the Hulk. Sam knew there must be a story there, and he hoped to hear it one day. Sam reached out to shake his hand. “Doctor Banner. Good to see you.”

“You, too. Please call me Bruce.” He smiled. “I almost have your new wings ready to go along with your Captain America uniform.”

Maria stood up and patted Sam on the shoulder. “You’re going to be the best Cap ever. Those wings will look great all star-spangled.”

“I feel like I’m being mocked somehow.”

“That’s because Hill is an expert on keeping egos in check, Wilson.” Nick appeared in the doorway of the adjacent conference room and gestured for them to join him.

Once they were seated at a long conference table, Nick looked at Sam and said, “Do you know where Barnes is?”

“No.”

“Have you had contact with him?”

Nothing that isn’t plausibly deniable. “No.”

“Is he alive?”

Sam inwardly sighed. He didn’t want to lie, so he didn’t. “I have reason to believe so.”

Nick was decidedly not pleased, but didn’t pursue it. “Do you think he presents a danger to the public at large?”

“Absolutely not.”

Nick looked to Maria and Bruce. Maria nodded her agreement with Sam, and Bruce said, “I barely knew him, but he seemed rational and in control, as well as very gentle and kind when we spoke on the day he left.”

Nick treated Bruce to one of his most skeptical eyebrow raises. “And the trigger words?”

Sam responded, “They’ve been dealt with.”

Nick quietly awaited an explanation that Sam would not give him, not wanting to implicate Wakanda without T’Challa’s permission. After staring at everyone at the table in turn, Nick looked as though he were trying to rein in his frustration as he said, “So, it is truly Bucky Barnes out there, and not the Winter Soldier?”

With all the authority he could muster, Sam said, “Yes.”

Nick slapped both hands on the table. “Okay then. We’ll continue to search for Barnes, but our first priority must be bringing together a new team because you, quite frankly, are not enough.”

“Gee, thank you, sir.” Maria crossed her arms and glared.

“My apologies, that was an unfortunate way of stating our situation.” Nick placed a sarcastic hand over his heart, and Maria smirked at him.

“We all know the situation. We have lost Earth’s mightiest defenders. Stark and Romanov are dead. Barton cannot work for us after his actions during the lost years. Thor has left the Earth behind. And with the exception of Barnes and Pepper Potts, the only people who know what happened to Steve Rogers are in this room.” Nick pointed at Bruce. “You are all that is left of the original Avengers.”

“And I’m not that guy anymore.”

“You see our problem.”

“What do you suggest we do, sir?” Maria was always one to get straight to the point.

“We need to recruit new talent. Carol Danvers does not belong to the Earth, although she is willing to come to our aid. Peter Parker is young and eager, but we need to allow him to finish his schooling and also live some of his life as a normal kid. T’Challa has a kingdom to oversee. Colonel Rhodes must split his time between us and his duties in DC. Scott Lang is, well, himself. And he wants to spend time with his daughter. Hope Van Dyne is interested, but she and Lang would not want to relocate here. Who knows, perhaps we could have a group of West Coast Avengers?”

“What about Wanda Maximoff?”

Nick looked down at where his hands were folded on the table before answering Sam’s question. “People have been scared of her ever since Lagos. And now that the world was almost destroyed by an alien invasion, I’m not sure the public will have confidence in someone enhanced they don’t already trust.”

His voice full of concern, Bruce asked, “Are we worried about New Asgard?”

Nick prevaricated. “They’re keeping a low profile.”

Bruce pushed the matter. “But some of their refugees are obviously alien to the Earth.”

Nick leaned his elbows on the table in front of him. “Then they’ll need to continue to keep a low profile.”

Sam said, “How low of a profile can they keep when a whole people need a new home? There must still be Asgardians on their way here.”

“We’ll have to keep them confined to their current location.”

Bruce sighed and shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s feasible. In any case, that’s not fair to them.”

“Well, then help me assemble a team to defend them against the bigots who will hate having them here.”

Maria, as always, was ready to act. “Any plans, boss?”

Nick nodded. “The public already knows we’ve lost Stark and Romanov. I’ve talked to Barton, and we’ve agreed to declare him dead, lost in the final battle with Thanos. He’ll be confined to his farm with his family for the rest of his life as punishment for his actions.”

“What about Rogers?”

Sam observed the silence after Maria’s question. He knew everyone was sitting with their own feelings about what had happened with Steve.

Eventually Nick answered. “People saw him at Stark’s funeral, so they know he survived the final battle, but we cannot let what he did become common knowledge. It would require too many explanations. I think we’re best off claiming he succumbed to injuries a few days later. We could say the serum finally stopped working, maybe say the Stones neutralized it or something. We’ll ease Wilson’s way into the Captain America role by making it a wish in Rogers’ last will and testament. And, maybe, a state funeral will lure Barnes in.”

Sam shook his head in disgust.

“Do you have something to add, Wilson?”

“It’s just cruel to make Barnes think Steve is dead, after all they’ve been through together.”

“Well, if he turns himself into us, we’ll let him in on the plan.”

When Sam failed to respond, Maria said, “Yes, sir.”

Bruce looked thoughtful. “Couldn’t we declare Barnes dead? Let him just live his own life?”

Maria shut that thought down quickly. “I would not advise that. If he is legally dead, it would be too easy to ‘disappear him’ without a public trial if he were apprehended. Remember, we aren’t the only ones looking for him.”

“Is that a real possibility? That he’d be summarily executed?”

As always, Sam was amazed at how Bruce always saw more compassion in the people around them than they deserved. That he could be so positive after all he’d been through would never fail to impress Sam. But he also knew Barnes had not been the recipient of much compassion in his life. “Steve always worried about that. It’s why he was so desperate for us to find Barnes first back when we discovered he was alive.” _Well, one of the reasons._

“And that’s why we need to find Barnes first again.” Nick pushed back in his chair and signed. “Wilson, did you know what Rogers planned to do when he returned the Stones?”

“No, I most certainly did not.” 

Bruce added, “I think Barnes did, though. He told Steve he was going to miss him, which was odd to me, because Steve was only going to be gone a few seconds.”

“You’re right.” Sam thought back to the last time he’d seen Steve and Bucky speak to each other. “And Steve just looked at him, so coldly.”

Bruce added, “I was worried I had messed things up, and Barnes took the time to assure me it wasn’t my fault before he left.”

“We really need to keep what Rogers did a secret. He abused unspeakable power for his own personal gain.” Nick sighed. “If word of that gets out, we’ll have an impossible time keeping any superheroes or enhanced people safe from public outrage.”

Sam was surprised, not that Nick sounded so disappointed about Steve’s actions, but that he was allowing his disappointment to be displayed so plainly in his words

Nick sat back in his chair and looked directly at Sam. “As it is, we are running into some obstacles about you, Wilson.”

“Me? What did I do?”

Nick glared at him. “Some people still consider you a criminal because you escaped with Rogers after the Sokovia Accords became law, which I have some sympathy for. Some of our government officials don’t think Rogers had the right to pick his own successor. There is also some merit to that argument. Some fear you have received a new version of the super-serum which was kept secret from them.” Nick softened his tone before he continued. “Others just plain don’t like you because you’re Black.”

Sam knew that was going to happen, but it still hurt like a kick to his gut. “Well, fuck ‘em.”

Maria squeezed Sam’s arm in support, but turned her response to Nick. “This would have been a great time to have Steve available to smooth the transition.”

“I’m giving that serious consideration.”

Bruce said, “But I thought we just all agreed it was better to have him declared dead?”

“Oh, we’ll still go through with that. We can make it so knowledge of his existence requires the highest possible security clearance.” Nick stood up to end the meeting. “But to most people, Steve Rogers is now dead. Understood?”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Nick clapped his hands together. “Alright, here is our current plan. I’ll continue to reach out to contacts about bringing in new members of the team. Banner, coordinate with Stark Industries to see how we can best assist in mitigating the impact of the fact the world’s population doubled in a literal snap. Hill and Wilson, bring Barnes in.”

Maria pushed off the arms of her chair and stood up. “Yes, boss.”

Nick left the room, with Bruce following soon after. Maria stayed to talk strategy with Sam for a few moments. “Where do you think we should check for Barnes next?”

“Let me deal with it.”

“You sure?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you know where he is?”

“Like I said earlier, I do not.” Sam tilted his head towards the door, and Maria followed him, filling the air with small talk, until they were outside the building. They walked over to the nearest food cart, and soon they both were leaning up against a building while nibbling on falafel dipped in tzatziki.

Mumbling through a mouthful of food, Sam said, “I have a lead.”

Maria wiped sauce from her mouth with the back of her hand as she said, “Want backup?”

“I won’t need it.” Sam smiled at her. “My call.”

“I trust you.” Maria winked. “Thanks for lunch.”

“Any time.”

The two shook hands, then Maria went back to headquarters. As Sam walked towards the nearest train station, his phone pinged. It was a message from Shuri. _Project Resurrection is a go. One week. Be here._


	4. Chapter 4

Sam had family in Indianapolis. He hadn’t seen them in a long time, not since before he went on the run with Steve, Wanda, and Natasha. He figured it was time to pay his aunt and uncle a visit for a few days. He also scheduled a few events, breaking ground on a new pharmaceutical production line and lobbying landowners to lower rents to increase affordable housing options. And if he took a detour for an afternoon to a town less than forty miles away, well, nobody would care.

Shelbyville, Indiana. Home to rivers and manufacturing plants and food production and farmers markets. Population of just over twenty thousand people, including one Bucky Barnes.

Bucky had told Sam to meet him at one of the city’s many parks. Sam found him watching dogs run around an enclosed off-leash dog park. He observed Bucky from a distance. He looked healthy, if thin for a super soldier. There was an ease to his stance, relaxed shoulders with his back to the pathway. No obvious weapons, although Sam had no doubt Bucky was armed, but there was nothing about him that would attract unwanted attention. If Sam hadn’t been looking for him, his eyes would have likely passed right over him.

“Hey, Barnes.”

“Wilson.” Bucky tilted his head towards a nearby park bench, located on a green riverbank.

Once seated next to Bucky, Sam could see the see the dark shadows under his eyes and the deep sadness etched in his face. Sam flashed back to seeing Bucky in Wakanda, greeting Steve. Even through his deep suspicions about Bucky’s recovery and motivations, Sam realized Bucky had been truly happy to see Steve. And it was the happiest Steve had ever been in Sam’s presence. All to go so wrong just hours later.

“So… Shelbyville?”

“Ancestral home of the Barnes.”

“Hiding in plain sight?”

“Everybody looks like a Barnes in this town.”

“Must be one ugly-ass town.”

Bucky smirked. “You’d fit right in.”

“You in contact with your family?”

Instead of answering directly, Bucky indicated a grey stone block on the far shore of the river “See that? It was the base of a statue of World War II hero James Buchanan Barnes, who died valiantly in the line of duty while fighting alongside his brother-in-arms and best friend, Captain America.” He paused, shame in his eyes. “They tore it down when it was discovered I was the Winter Soldier. I don’t think there is a single photo of me in this town anymore. Certainly nobody who would be proud to claim me as family.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Bucky waved his hand dismissively and changed the subject. “Who do you have on your team, Cap?”

Sam could hear Fury’s litany of problems in his head. He leaned back on the bench and sighed. “We are kind of understaffed right now. Rhodey is based out of DC, trying to keep the politicians from freaking out about losing the Avengers. Banner is focusing on the tech. Wanda is keeping to herself. We are trying to let Parker have a normal life, but that isn’t going too well as you’ve probably seen on the news.”

“That poor kid.” Bucky interrupted. “Is he okay?”

“So far, we’ve kept him and his aunt safe. They’re at Stark Industries, so the security around them is good.”

This answer seemed to satisfy Bucky, so Sam continued. ”Strange sets his own terms. Lang is still very new at this, and so is Van Dyne. T’Challa has a country to lead. I have no idea where Thor or Danvers are. Most of the time, it’s just me, with Fury and Hill desperately calling for backup.“ He turned his head with a hopeful expression on his face. “We would benefit from having you around.”

“Look, I will help you, if you want. I can train new recruits. I can lead ops, plan strategy. I can rebuild the Compound with my bare hands. But please, don’t ask me to fight.”

“I won’t.”

“I mean, if it is Thanos-level shit, I’ll have your back, guns blazing and knives out. But anything else…”

“I understand.”

“I can’t. I can’t fight anymore.” Bucky flexed his vibranium hand over and over again. “I can’t.”

Sam rested his hand upon Bucky’s, stilling it. “I got it, man. I won’t ask you to fight.”

Bucky looked down, startled by Sam’s consoling touch. He exhaled deeply and nodded his thanks.

Sam remembered Steve’s stories about this man. How gentle and loving he was with his family. How he never started any fights, but ended Steve’s for him. How disappointed he was when Steve arrived in Europe to witness bloodshed Bucky had never wanted him to see. 

“I also know you’re still recovering from…” Sam didn’t really know how to end that sentence. Decades of brainwashing? Losing yet another five years of your life? Being abandoned by your best friend? He settled for waving his hand towards the dissembled monument across the river. “I’ll give you as much time as you need.”

Bucky favored Sam with a small, satisfied smile. “Thank you.”

Sam stretched his legs out in front of him, hoping he looked like any one else out to enjoy the park. “So, been here long? What do you do here in Shelbyville?”

“I move around a lot, with Shelbyville just being a place I return to from time to time. My routine is pretty much the same everywhere. I walk dogs at the local shelter. Been taking on some construction jobs here and there, since so much needs to be rebuilt. I bring meals to the elderly.” He seemed pleased and embarrassed as he said, “They like it because I get some of their old references.”

“That’s good.” Sam grimaced a bit. “You might actually be more productive than I have been.”

“Gotta make up for my sins somehow.” Bucky shrugged. “Having a hard time settling in as Captain America?”

If anyone could understand what the transition was like, it would be the man sitting next to him. Sam thought for a moment before he responded. “It isn’t so much being Cap that’s rough. It’s not having the options to do what I want the way I want. Nothing big has come up yet, but I’m terrified of needing to deal with something large scale without a full team behind me. And I’m spending more time in meetings than getting hands-on in the recovery effort, and it’s frustrating the hell out of me.”

Bucky nodded in understanding. “Sorry about that. I bet a lot of those meetings have been about me?”

Sam smirked at him. “Gonna stay here for awhile?”

“Are they gonna send people after me?”

“Nah.”

“Then I’ll stay here awhile this time.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at Bucky. “I keep getting messages from the royal family of Wakanda, demanding your return.”

“Has the US government looked for me there yet?”

“Yep. And they are satisfied you aren’t hiding out there.”

“Good. I’ll give it another few months or so before going back to visit.” Bucky looked sheepishly at Sam. “I had built a life there. It was a good one. It gave me hope I had a future.”

“Then why haven’t you gone back?”

“I showed up to Tony Stark’s funeral.” When Sam looked confused, Bucky continued. “You might have noticed officials there who aren’t my biggest fans. Pepper Potts made them all sign agreements they wouldn’t arrest me that day and they wouldn’t disclose I was there.” Admiration filled his tone. “Seriously, before her own husband’s funeral, she does this. That woman is amazing.”

“Yes, she is.”

“But, anyway, they saw me talking to Shuri and Okoye. They know I was at the battle in Wakanda. I’m sure they figured it out. The people of Wakanda have been so wonderful to me, so much better than I deserve. I didn’t want to bring another battle, diplomatic or not, down upon them.”

“That the only reason you haven’t gone back?”

Bucky wrapped his arms protectively around his middle. “There are some memories I don’t want to face.”

The elephant in the room suddenly loomed quite large. Surprisingly, Bucky was the first one to acknowledge it. “So, how is he?”

Sam didn’t need to ask who _he_ meant. “He says he misses you.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No, nobody does.”

“Does he know where I am.”

“No.”

A look of sad relief flitted across Bucky’s face. “Thank you.”

In return, Sam asked a question he’d wanted to for weeks now. “Did you know he was going to pass the shield to me?”

Bucky spent a moment lost in his memories. “We’d talked about it a few times, when he’d visit me in Wakanda. He seemed a bit envious of my quiet life. He was thinking of retiring.”

“Wow.”

“Told him you’d be better at it than he ever was, because if you ever threw yourself out of a plane, at least you could fly.”

“Bet he appreciated that.”

“He was always a punk.” Bucky’s face twisted in sorrow.

For awhile, Sam and Bucky sat in silence. Without the distraction of conversation, Sam paid attention to the sounds of the park - children laughing, dogs barking, birds singing, river flowing. But it was so quiet compared to DC and New York, lacking the ever-present sounds of traffic and planes and energy he was used to. These surroundings should have been peaceful, but instead Sam found himself to be a bit unsettled. It took him a few minutes to figure out why… the park sounded _old-fashioned_. He breathed in deep and exhaled slowly.

“I still can’t believe he went back to the Forties.”

Bucky did not respond. Sam didn’t know if Bucky wanted to talk about it, but Sam needed to. 

“Steve thinks he can just pick up where he left off with all of us. The fact it was only ten seconds for us, in his mind, means we should be fine with this. But all I can think about are those times as a kid when you’d come back to school after summer vacation and your wholegroup of friendshadchanged because so much happened while you were apart for those two months. I don’t know who that man is who came back.”

Bucky turned to look at Sam, who could see the permission in his eyes to continue.

“Gotta admit, I hope he tried to make a lot of changes. Otherwise, it kinda hurts to think he yearned for a past when he and I wouldn’t have even been allowed to serve in the same unit.” Sam leaned forward and wrung his hands between his knees. “I mean, I gave up years with my family to go on the run with him. And he can just go back to Jim Crow and McCarthy? Before Loving vs Virginia? Brown vs the Board of Education? Before Stonewall and Malcolm and MLK?”

Bucky reached out with his metal hand to touch Sam’s shoulder in a calming fashion. It bled some of the tension out of Sam, if not the anger. “I just feel like the man who could make this decision wasn’t the man I knew. And I sacrificed so much for him. Clint, Scott, Wanda, oh god Natasha, poor Nat… the things we did for Steve. And he passed on the shield to me, but didn’t trust me with his plan, and I’m just flailing, trying to live up to an impossible standard I didn’t ask to meet. So, I’m angry, man. I’m angry.”

Bucky merely said, “I’m sorry I don’t have any answers for you.”

And if Bucky had no answers for him, Sam doubted he had any for himself. He wondered how angry the man beside him was. 

“You know, I bet he saved you in that other timeline he created.”

Bucky just shook his head. “He’d already saved me here. That was enough for me. Guess I wasn’t enough for him.”

“Barnes.” Sam hesitated. “Bucky…”

“You know, growing up, we thought Steve might not make twenty, much less thirty years old. Seeing him on that bench, aged and content, it’s a goddamn miracle. All I’ve ever wanted is for him to be happy and healthy and whole. But I was supposed to be the best man at his wedding, the one who taught his kids how to dance and throw a baseball. We were supposed to get old together. And he got old, and I didn’t. All those years I hoped he’d stay alive, and I’m still going to outlive him. I’m happy for him, I truly am. But I’m sad for me, okay? I **j** ust need time to lick my wounds.”

The sun was setting now, casting a golden glow across the park. It brought out auburn highlights in Bucky’s hair, but no grey. Sam was struck by the fact the man next to him was over a century old by the calendar, but younger than Sam biologically. And obviously, Steve’s serum hadn’t slowed his aging, but what about Bucky? How many decades did Bucky have ahead of him?

“It’s okay to be angry too, Barnes.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Are you sure?”

Bucky paused to consider his words. Sam waited patiently, and after a minute or two, Bucky said, “With all the things I’ve done, I know I have no right to be alive, to be living a life.”

Sam opened his mouth in denial, but Bucky stopped him. “No, just let me say this. When I realized who I was, what I’d been made into, I knew I didn’t deserve to live. The only thing that kept me from eating a bullet was the fact it would hurt Steve. And look, I know it’s not healthy to live for someone, but I was as far from okay as someone could get, you know? I wanted to die, but I couldn’t do that to him.”

It was hard to hear the pain in Bucky’s voice as he carried on. “I’m a lot better now. Wakanda, you know? Nobody can control me anymore. I’m not a ticking time bomb. And I got to a point where I started planning a future. I just always imagined Steve would be in it.”

Bucky smiled, but it was a small, bitter thing. “Thought we’d hit the end of the line when I fell off that damned train, but we both made it to the future. Like we were meant to make it here together. It was like some grand plan of the universe that we would live in the future together. And then he just left.”

Sam saw tears fill Bucky’s eyes. “And the worst part is, I never once left him because I wanted to. He walked into every damned enlistment center in New York, but I was drafted into World War II. They offered me an honorable discharge after he saved me from that camp, but I couldn’t imagine leaving him to face battle alone. And that choice led to seven decades of torture and violence and murder, and I’m still not angry at him for that.”

He brusquely wiped the tears from his eyes. “He decided the past with her was what he wanted, not a future with me in it. I can’t even be angry at him for this. I always knew I wasn’t worth it. So yeah, I’m sad for me. But not angry at him.”

Something clicked for Sam, something he’d always suspected and now knew for certain, and he asked, “How long?”

“Hmm?”

“How long have you been in love with him?”

“Since 1934.”

The brutal simplicity of that answer took Sam’s breath away. And now things made sense to Sam, things about Steve and the urgency of his search for Bucky, the surety that Bucky was still there, underneath the Winter Soldier. “You know, for what it’s worth, I would have sworn he…”

“Don’t.” Then, more softly, Bucky said, “Please don’t. I think that just makes it worse.”

The two men sat, both lost in their thoughts, as twilight fell upon them.


	5. Chapter 5

“I’ve told T’Challa I want to be available to help you, if needed.”

Sam looked in surprise at General Okoye as she escorted him through the corridors of the Citadel, the royal residence, in Birnin Zana. “Really?”

“I helped Romanov in the years you were all away. I’d be glad to do so again.”

Sam knew Natasha led a small group during that time. It still pissed him off that she’d been abandoned by other members of the Avengers, left to hold some semblance of a team together. He was grateful others did not want to leave him in the same circumstances. “We’d be honored to have your assistance, General.”

“And tell Barnes I miss kicking his ass during our sparring matches.”

Sam laughed. “Oh, I will. Definitely telling him that.”

They came to a stop in front of a door. Okoye waved her kimoyobeads in front of a panel.

Sam didn’t expect to see Vision’s metallic body on a table in Shuri’s lab. He knew, rationally, that Vision had been an artificial construct with great capabilities, not a human being. But death had reduced him to a pile of metal, so much less than the sum of his parts.

He was ruminating over Vision when he heard. “Hello, Sam. Or should I call you Captain America?”

Sam turned and grinned. “Wanda, come here.” He pulled her into a hug. “So good to see you.”

And it was. Wanda was hard to get to know. She tended to shy away from people, realizing how much she scared them. Sam knew Wanda worked hard to keep herself from inadvertently using her powers, and he no longer feared her. Instead he just saw a young woman who had lost most of the connections she’d had in her life: Pietro, Clint, Natasha, Steve… Hell, in the midst of dealing with his new duties and reconnecting with his own family, Sam hadn’t been around for her either. Guilt caused him to tighten the embrace.

“How have you been?”

“Lonely without the team, without Viz.” She tilted her head back to look up at him. “You?”

“I miss those goddamn assholes.”

Wanda burrowed into Sam’s chest and said, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Wouldn’t be anywhere else, kiddo.”

Sam and Wanda were still hugging when Princess Shuri and Doctor Helen Cho entered the room.

Shuri smiled at Sam and said, “Thank you for coming.”

“I’d never turn down a summons from my favorite princess.”

Shuri playfully rolled her eyes and then gestured for everyone to gather around Vision.

Shuri wasted no time. “As all of you know, I was in the process of disassociating Vision’s operations from the Mind Stoneduring the initial battle with Thanos here in Wakanda. Although I could not finish the work in time, I did get very close. I saved the data I had extracted, and the memory cores it was stored on survived the battle.”

Helen added, “I’ve now had more time to study Vision’s body, and I can give him a power core to replace at least the energy properties of the Stone.”

Shuri said, “We can, for lack of a better term, power him back on. We can do it using his internal systems in the hopes the data might still be intact, and if that doesn’t work, we can transfer the data I extracted.”

Sam let out a breath he had not known he was holding. Having Vision back would be a tremendous help to the team, if he returned with even a small fraction of his abilities.

Helen looked at Vision’s body with a mixture of pride and sadness on her face. “Technically, I was under the employ of Stark Industries when I was forced to help create Vision. Part of his system is a transfer of the Jarvis AI, also a product of Stark Industries. Its CEO Pepper Potts has given us her permission to go through this procedure, but…”

Shuri reached out and gently clasped Wanda’s hands. “But out of respect for your relationship with Vision, we request your permission as well.”

Wanda’s voice trembled. “Will this bring him back to us?”

Helen and Shuri exchanged looks. Helen finally said, “We have no guarantees for you, but at least we will have tried.”

Sam put his arm around Wanda. “Your call.”

Wanda placed a hand on Vision’s face, over the space where the Mind Stone once rested. How much of Vision was the Jarvis AI versus the Mind Stone nobody, not even Vision himself, had known. “Is it selfish to want him back so much?”

Sam had spent a lot of time recently thinking about being selfish. What did it mean to be selfish? At one point, Bruce and Maria had tried to convince Sam, convince themselves, that Steve’s choice to live in the past had merely been selfish. But Sam knew better. _Selfish_ was a word reserved for the person who swipes two slices of pizza before others who chipped in even get one. _Selfish_ was Fury taking a vacation in a Skrull spaceship without telling anyone. What Steve had done wasn’t selfish, it was arrogant and reprehensible and disappointing. But this?

“Wanda, from what you told me, Thanos turned back time to kill Vision. He messed with the natural order of things. It isn’t selfish to want to undo that, to save someone you love.”

“Thank you.” Wanda took a deep breath and nodded. “You have my permission.”

“Wilson?”

Sam realized everyone in the room was looking at him. _Oh._ That’s right. He was Captain America, which meant people usually looked to him for the final decision about anything regarding members of the Avengers. “Yeah, let’s do this.”

“Alright, get out of my lab. You can watch from over there.” Shuri made shooing motions towards an adjoining room with floor-to-ceiling windows.

Wanda placed a tender kiss upon Vision’s forehead, then followed Sam. They could see Shuri and Helen through the windows. The two women were calmly hooking up cables, pressing buttons, waving hands over floating control panels, and carefully observing information on viewscreens. 

Wanda worried her hands together. After a long while, she broke the silence. “They are so calm.”

“That’s because they know what they’re doing while we’re just waiting for the results.”

“It feels wrong to hope.” Wanda looked up at Sam with a pained smile. “I was grateful to have been Dusted, after watching him die. Returning almost felt like punishment for not being able to stop Thanos. I didn’t think I could have hope again.”

“I understand. I mean, I’m Captain America now. I’m supposed to be happy about that. But I miss Nat, I even miss Tony, and I barely knew him. And Steve…” Wanda didn’t know the truth about Steve yet, so Sam merely said, “I’m angry he isn’t around to help with the recovery effort. Half the world was gone for five years, and we don’t quite fit back in.” Sam let out a bitter laugh. “Hell, this must be what Steve and Barnes felt like, but at least Barnes is still…”

Vision abruptly sat up on the table. Wanda ran back into the lab, Sam quick on her heels.

Shuri held up a hand to keep them at a distance as the last of the cables were disengaged. Sam noticed for the first time that the cables had served as restraints.

Shuri placed herself directly in Vision’s line of sight. “Do you know where you are?”

Vision inclined his head, as if he was listening to internal voices as well as Shuri’s. “Yes, your highness. I am in Wakanda, in a laboratory, although it is not same the laboratory I was in previously or the last place I was.”

Sam relaxed, his muscles slack with relief. That was Vision’s voice, his cadence, his gentle persona. 

Vision continued, “I fear quite some time has passed.”

Helen surreptitiously poked his foot to test for reflexes. Vision stared at her curiously instead of flinching. “May I run some diagnostics on you?”

“Of course, Doctor Cho. It is good to see you again.”

Both scientists smiled, as Helen said, “Good to see you, too. It’s been awhile.”

Wanda hesitatingly approached the table. “Viz, is that really you?”

“Wanda.” Vision reached out a hand to cup her cheek.

“How do you feel?” 

Vision’s red, metallic hand turned into one with the appearance of a human hand. “I just feel you.”

Wanda gave a quiet sob as Vision gathered her in his arms.

Sam hated to interrupt the moment, but he had to ask, “I thought the Stone gave you your powers?”

Wanda stepped out of Vision’s arms, but held onto his hand as he responded to Sam’s question. “It did, but I was trying to understand that. To know how it worked. The stone could manipulate the technology I was built from on the molecular level, and I was working on subroutines to help me mimic the Stone’s ability.” Vision seemed amused. “I guess I must have figured it out.”

“Can you still fly? Emit a beam from your forehead?”

“Forehead beams?” Vision seemed lost in thought, then brightened. “No. Flying? Perhaps.”

“Don’t try it in my lab. I don’t care how happy we are to see you.”

Vision, looked around, tallying those present and those conspicuously absent.“I gather I have missed many things.”

Sam knew that duty would fall to him. “We’ll fill you in on the important stuff.”

Shuri added to what Sam said. “And you can compare your data to the backup files I’ve stored.”

Wanda interrupted. “But not yet.”

Sam heard the plea in Wanda’s voice and agreed. “Not yet.” She smiled in gratitude and gripped Vision’s hand even tighter.

“Everything looks good.” Helen stepped away from the view screen. “Welcome back, Vision.”

“I think we all deserve some rest.” Shuri gestured towards the door. “Allow me to show you to your quarters. We have a wing of the residence set up for honored visitors. Your belongings are waiting for you there.”

Shuri guided all of them to the floor with their accommodations. Vision would be staying with Wanda, and Helen and Sam each had their own spacious suite.

After showing Sam around his rooms, Shuri paused at the threshold and asked, “How are you doing?”

“Me?” Sam realized with a start how few people had asked after him in recent weeks and gained greater sympathy for how surprised Steve was when he had asked him something similar when they met. “It’s weird, you know? Some of my nieces are five years older than the last time I saw them, some aren’t. My mom doesn’t look like she aged a day, but emotionally sounds like she aged a century.”

Shuri reached out and squeezed his hand with understanding. 

“I miss Nat like hell.” Sensing Shuri’s expectation of another name, he rushed to add, “And Steve, of course.” It wasn’t quite a lie. 

“It is no wonder to me that Bucky needed to strike out on his own, without Steve.”

“General Okoye was kind enough to take me to Barnes’ cottage. I picked up a few of his things for him. You know, just in case I see him.“ Sam winked at Shuri. “He didn’t have much, though.”

“Perhaps more of his belongings are in Captain Rogers’ apartment?” Shuri gestured to a door at the end of the corridor. “Did you not know he had accommodations here?”

“He never told us where Barnes was. Didn’t even tell us he was visiting him, although we knew he must be. I kinda thought he was staying with Sharon Carter when he took breaks from our missions.” Sam couldn’t remember how he had come to that conclusion, but he knew Steve had never dissuaded him from it. He frowned at the realization. 

Shuri waved for Sam to follow her. “I’m sure he was just trying to protect Bucky. The more people who knew his whereabouts, the more likely he would be discovered.”

They stopped in front of the door, and Shuri waved her hand in front of a small panel which lit up the same color as her Kimoyo beads. “I’ve been told Captain Rogers did not return here after the battle of Wakanda,and we’ve left the room untouched since then.”

This apartment was larger than Sam’s guest suite. There were floor-to-ceiling windows with a magnificent view of the city. There was a balcony granting access to fresh air. The furniture was modern, but comfortable, with throw pillows and blankets making the couch look particularly inviting. That’s when it struck Sam: this wasn’t a place where a guest stayed for a few nights. This was a place Steve had _lived_.

Sam started to look around. There were doors leading into adjoining rooms, and Sam walked over to open one of them. It was a bedroom.

“They would split their time between Bucky’s cottage and here. It depended on their moods.”

“Was Barnes having difficulty around crowds?”

“No, he was fine, but being on the run weighed upon Captain Rogers. He was far more moody than Bucky ever was.”

Sam stood by the one large bed. Both bedside tables were in use. Science fiction books, leather-bound journals, and a framed portrait of three young girls stacked on one; military history, sketchbooks, and a drawing of sweet-faced blond woman on the other. 

Heraised an eyebrow at Shuri, who shrugged. “Bucky said they shared the bed, like they had as children. He said the proximity to each other helped keep the nightmares at bay.”

Sam raised both eyebrows as high as they could go. 

The rest of the apartment also displayed signs of comfortable cohabitation. The second door led into a bathroom with two toothbrushes on a double-sinked vanity. Two comfortable chairs on the balcony overlooking the city. Two coffee mugs on the kitchen counter, still hoping to be filled.

The familiar outline drew his attention to a painting on the wall. It was the Brooklyn Bridge, one side in sepia tones, the other in brilliant color, like the past was merging with the present. He noted the signature.

“Wow, this is amazing.”

Shuri drew his attention to another canvas. “Rogers said he loved the light here.”

That light spilled over Bucky, bringing out the auburn highlights in his brown hair and warming his bare shoulders. “I didn’t realize Steve was such a talented artist.”

“Those family portraits on the bedside tables were by Rogers as well.”

On the wall opposite the Brooklyn Bridge, Sam recognized portraits of himself, Wanda, Clint, and the dearly missed Natasha. A recent photo of Steve and Bucky, arms around each other. Everywhere he looked, Sam saw Steve and Bucky’s past and present living harmoniously together.

He pointed to a stack of papers on the dining room table. “Are these Steve’s sketches, too?”

“Oh, yes, they were in the early design phase.”

“Of?”

A new voice entered the conversation. “Their future home.”

Sam turned at T’Challa’s words. “Good afternoon, your highness.”

T’cholla embraced Sam. “We do not need to observe formalities here, in the home of absent friends.”

“So, you say they were designing a house?” Sam continued to leaf through the pages. Spacious kitchen, artist studio, bathroom with large sunken tub and separate shower stall, one bedroom with a skylight above the bed.

“Bucky is officially a citizen of Wakanda now. As such, he was granted a plot of land. Bucky turned it down, of course, like the stubborn pain in the ass he is, but it made him think of making a home.” T’Challa leaned against the table. “Rogers was contemplating retirement after passing along the Captain America role. He wanted it to go to you.”

“There is so much in what you just said that I did not know.”

“We granted Bucky citizenship to protect him. We have no extradition treaties with other governments.”

Shuri added, “Bucky is like a brother to us.”

T’Challa nodded his agreement. “He found peace here. That we could give that to him, an outsider, when we have been closed off for so long… his presence in Wakanda is meaningful to us. And we have grown to care for the man himself. Bucky knows he is welcome here for as long as he wishes.”

Shuri ran a gentle hands over the house sketches. “And when Rogers visited, he, too, found some peace. Two old warriors, simply wanting to rest.”

T’Challa asked Sam, “You did not know any of this?”

Sam shook his head. He thought of how the man he considered one of his best friends could hide so much from him. Keeping Bucky safe made sense, and Sam could not be offended by that. However, he was definitely unsettled. Not just by the secrets, those he could justify by the need for discretion for Bucky’s safety. But Sam waved his hands helplessly around him. “This is not the home of a man who could not move on from the past.”

T’Challa agreed, “It is a shame Rogers did not survive to reach the future he wanted with Bucky.”

But he had, and he’d rejected it. Steve had rejected Bucky. He had rejected Sam and the team and the decades of life with all of them.

Sam had spent the first few months of being Captain America asking himself _What Would Steve Rogers Do?_ He had come to the conclusion that Steve had learned to trust in his team, and most importantly, trust in his own instincts. Sam had to learn to trust his own gut. “T’Challa, Shuri… There is something I have to tell you.”


	6. Chapter 6

Sam no longer got called into meetings in DC very often, so he was trepidatious about this one. He was glad to have Maria at his side. She kept him calm with her competence, grounded with her sarcasm, focused with her intelligence. She was his strongest supporter as Captain America and his quickest critic. He liked her, but more importantly, he valued her.

As they waited in the corridor for Nick to join them, Sam said, “Thanks for being here.”

Maria smirked. “Couldn’t let you wade into the shark tank by yourself. Especially without the ability to fly away.”

Sam felt self-conscious if he wore the Captain America suit to meetings, but now he felt weird without it. Maria must have noticed his quick glance down at his simple shirt and jeans, because she playfully tapped his upper arm. “Hey, I was kidding. You always handle yourself just fine.”

Sam wondered if he would ever get used to the new expectations of him. He exhaled deeply. “Thanks.”

Nick joined them at that moment. “No need to worry, in any case. It’s only Secretary Ross and a few consultants. We’re not having you run the full gauntlet today.”

Nick waved a badge over a pad, then leaned in for a retinal scan. The door opened, and he waved Sam and Maria ahead of him into the office suite. The conference room behind the reception desk had glass walls, so the other meeting attendees could be seen as they walked towards them.

Sam tilted his head towards the room and its occupants. “Is that Steve?” 

The last time Sam had talked to Steve, it was to brief him about the state funeral planned for Captain America. Steve accepted the decision to declare him dead as the most logical way to proceed and said he was enjoying his quiet life.

“Yes, it is. He wanted to come in as a private advisor. To smooth the transition for Wilson, like we discussed.” Nick addressed the unspoken question. “For those in leadership he interacts with, they’ve been told the serum stopped working and his age caught up with him rapidly. ”

“And they’re buying that?”

“If they aren’t, they haven’t said anything.”

Maria’s voice was full of doubt when she asked, “Steve is okay with the lie?”

Nick shrugged, a rare sign of discomfort. “Apparently, yes.”

Although it was always followed by guilt at thinking poorly of someone he once considered his best friend, Sam couldn’t shake his nagging sense of distrust about Steve. “But he’s a horrible liar.”

“Guess he’s had decades of extra practice,” Maria said, drily.

_Hmm…_ Maria was right. Steve would have been forced to lie, even in a new timeline. He certainly couldn’t tell the world he was from the future and what he’d experienced there and then, perhaps not even divulge the truth to those dearest to him. Sam recalled how uncomfortable Steve had been when required to go undercover, and he found himself deeply unsettled by the thought of a Steve who could easily lie. 

A green light appeared over the door, which slid open for them to enter. In addition to Steve and Secretary Ross, James Rhodes was also in the room. He stood up to shake hands with Maria and clasp his hands on Sam’s shoulders. “We are living in some strange times, Sam.” He kept his voice low, as did Sam, when he responded, “You don’t know the half of it, man. We need to catch up.”

Everyone shook hands, then settled down at table. Secretary Ross wasted no time getting started.

“Thank you for gathering today. As you know, we are experiencing a humanitarian crisis beyond anything in the history of humankind. When fifty percent of us disappeared, our infrastructure began to crumble and production capacity collapsed with the population. The loss of people was easier than absorbing the influx when they returned. We now need to reframe the battle we are facing. We are no longer mourning the half of our population we lost. We lack appropriate food, housing, and transportation for the world’s current population, which doubled overnight.”

Nick gestured towards Sam and Maria. “Our team may not be at the full complement they once were, but we stand ready to continue the work we’ve started.” 

Sam said, “We’ve been honored to contribute to the rebuilding effort.”

“We commend your work. The projects you’ve championed have certainly been completed faster with your assistance. However, we’d like the Avengers to step back from construction and distribution enterprises and instead be deployed to protect high value targets.”

“Such as?” 

Sam immediately noted the suspicion in Rhodey’s voice. Rhodey was a thoughtful man, not one to jump to conclusions quickly, so Sam knew to listen carefully to all the words _not_ being spoken.

“The details aren’t important at the moment. The Avengers will receive their orders from a committee impanelled by the United Nations, just as was laid out in the Sokovia Accords.”

Maria said, “I wasn’t aware the Sokovia Accords were still being observed. There were no sanctions after our team battled Thanos and his forces without committee oversight.” Her tone was polite, her smile tight. Sam forced himself to look more relaxed than he felt.

Ross waved a dismissive hand. “We always knew there would be exceptions. Now we are reminding you who is in charge.”

Sam looked at Steve, surprised he hadn’t spoken up yet. “Steve, are you on board with this?”

Steve nodded. “Sam, look, I’ve had the unique opportunity to witness these events twice. It’s allowed me to learn from my mistakes, my arrogance. The Avengers need supervision and guidance. I understand that now.”

_Wait, what?_

Sam could not let it slide. “Twice?”

“Yes.” He seemed confused by Sam’s confusion. “You do realize I look like this because I got old the regular way, by living.”

Sam exchanged a quick look with Rhodey before answering, “Yeah, but I assumed you created another timeline and just hopped back over to this one.”

Steve chuckled, “As far as I know, we haven’t developed the technology required to traverse timelines.”

Nick kept his eye fixed on Steve, but shifted in his chair. “But we haven’t noticed any changes in this one.”

“Good. That was the plan. I had to make sure I didn’t impact it, because there were two of me, you know. Peggy’s husband and the one underneath the ice.”

“But how is it possible you, Steve Rogers, made no impact?” Rhodey sounded like he was struggling to keep his composure.

Steve shrugged. “I led a simple, quiet life as a house-husband and father. Nobody expected Steve Rogers to be alive. I was just Peggy’s husband to the world. I think I earned that, don’t you?”

Ross smiled reassuringly. “Of course, you did.”

“So there were two of you in this timeline all along?” Maria’s arms were crossed over her stomach, like she felt ill. 

Sam felt much the same. _You didn’t save them. You didn’t save Barnes, you didn’t save Stark’s parents, you didn’t save Natasha…_

Sam saw the distressed expression on Rhodey’s face and knew he was thinking the same thing.

Steve was oblivious to the turmoil he’d caused in his friends. “Yes. Hence, my unique perspective. I witnessed myself make mistakes, unable to interfere, but able to better learn from them. The Avengers need direction.”

Ross did not bother to hide his gloating about having Steve in agreement with the Accords. “Direction and more firepower. I think it has become abundantly clear the Barnes situation needs to be handled. Either he’s with us and we can put him to use in our peacekeeping efforts, or he’s in prison so nobody else has him. Agreed?”

Steve responded immediately. “Agreed. He would be a substantial asset to us if he could be properly motivated to join the team. And certainly, we can’t let anyone else get to him first.”

Sam twitched.

Ross slapped his hands on the table. “Then it’s settled. Colonel Rhodes, please assemble a Strike team to apprehend James Barnes. We’ve operated too softly for too long on this matter.”

Rhodey shot a quick glance at Sam before speaking. “With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, Barnes will only turn himself in to friendlies. Treating him as an enemy combatant will not only prove ineffective, but it is disrespectful to his status as one of our own veterans.” 

“I disagree. What do you say, Commander Rogers?”

By this point, Sam was not surprised to hear Steve agree with Secretary Ross. “Barnes has had plenty of time to turn himself in.”

_Barnes._

Rhodey shook his head. “At least give me some time to put together a team of trusted and tested operatives. This mission must be discreet. Some of the world’s interested parties have received intel from us heavily implying Barnes is dead. Anyhigh-profile effortwill clue them in. And in the meantime, if Sam and his team can bring him in, all the better.”

Nick brought his full authority to the table now. “Colonel Rhodes has suggested the best course of action.”

Ross attempted to disagree. “I’m not so sure…”

Maria interrupted Ross. “The Winter Soldier does not want to be found. Give me and Wilson more time to lure him out while Rhodey assembles his team.” For good measure, she added, “Please, sir.”

Nick quickly responded, “I have no objections.”

Rhodey agreed. “I don’t see why not.”

Sam didn’t allow for Ross or Steve to interrupt. “Agent Hill, you’re with me.”

Maria stood. “Sure thing, Cap.”

Sam and Rhodey also rose to their feet as Rhodey said, “I’ll go back to the Pentagon and get things started on my end.”

Ross threw up his hands, realizing he’d lost control of the situation. “Well, before you go, perhaps you can satisfy my curiosity. Wilson?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you know of any reason why Wakanda has now restricted United States diplomatic entry to you and your chosen companions alone?”

Sam couldn’t help but think _Because Princess Shuri has witnessed Barnes’ memories, and the whole royal family is upset not only with his betrayal of Bucky, but that Steve apparently has been corrupted by his own power._

Steve looked mildly interested, not betraying any conflict that this diplomatic turmoil was in part directed at him.

Because nobody had confirmed to Sam the exact reasons for the Wakandan decision, he could truthfully say, “No, sir.”

Ross raised an annoyed eyebrow, but said nothing.

Nick settled deeper into his chair. “Colonel Rhodes, I know you’re busy, but I hope you have time to update Wilson and Hill on the Jersey proposal.”

Sam realized Nick was buying themtime to speak privately. “We can walk with you, if that helps.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’d be great. Thank you.”

Sam, Maria, and Rhodey chatted about a mass transit upgrade project well underway until they exited the building. Rhodes said, “I’m parked a few blocks away.” 

Sam pushed a button on his StarkTech watch, scrambling the signal of any nearby listening devices. “All clear.”

Rhodey started it off. “Steve really let Tony’s parents die.”

Maria fumed. “He let SHIELD get compromised by Hydra. Coulson would be devastated.”

“And Barnes…” Sam’s voice cracked. “I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds out.”

Rhodey asked sharply, “Do you think he’ll become violent? Vengeful?”

Sam related his current fear. “I’m honestly worried he’ll kill himself.”

“Jesus.” 

“Barnes put himself back together again hoping to live up to Steve’s faith in him.” Sam swallowed down the nausea threatening to overtake him.

“And they want to use him as a weapon.” Maria shook her head in horror.

Rhodey was clearly dismayed. “I can’t believe the disrespect back there. Barnes is the longest-held American POW, and they want to treat him like that.”

“We’ll get Barnes first. You make sure they can’t legally force him to serve.” Maria answered the doubting faces of the two men. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll want to join the team of his own volition?”

“Did either of you you notice anything else weird going on back there?”

Maria responded, “Sam, that was nothing but weird. Anything in particular stand out to you?”

One word kept ringing in his ears. “Steve referred to Barnes as an asset.”

“Well, he would be a great help to us.”

Sam realized Maria didn’t know. Neither did Rhodey. “But Maria, that’s what Hydra called him. The Asset.”

Maria’s stride faltered briefly, enough for Sam to know she understood.

And so did Rhodey. “Shit, this is bad.”

Sam felt lost. He couldn’t believe Steve was Hydra, but he also couldn’t bring himself to trust Steve. “I don’t know what’s going on. But something is very wrong.”

Rhodey stopped at the next intersection. “You know, even when I disagreed with him, I always respected Steve for doing what he thought was right. Now, I don’t know… I feel like I don’t know anything.” 

Something was nagging away at Sam. Something that had been bothering him about this whole situation ever since Steve returned. “It’s like…”

“Like what?” Maria gave him an encouraging nudge.

Sam put his hands on his hips. “This is going to sound nuts, but it’s almost like that Steve back there was a caricature of himself, based on history books, you know?”

Maria agreed. “It’s been botheringme, too. Went back in time to be with the person we were taught was the love of his life, being all God and Country with the suits.”

“Yeah.” Relief that he wasn’t alone forced an abrupt laugh out of Sam. “It feels so wrong.”

“That’s an understatement.” Rhodes sighed, then looked around at the increasing foot traffic as the evening commute was about to begin. “You guys need a ride?”

“No, thanks. We’ve got a helicopter waiting for us.”

“Good luck, you two.”

After shaking hands, Rhodey split off, and Sam and Maria continued towards the Stark Industries DC building. Sam disabled his communications scrambler, and his phone immediately chirped. 

Text message from Shuri. _Code Purple_

_Damn._ Sam turned the scrambler back on. _“_ We need a Quinjet, and I think we should bring in Sharon Carter. We need to keep it quiet, though.”

For the first time since this whole fraught meeting began, Maria favored Sam with a genuine smile. “Don’t insult me by implying that’s a challenge.”

Sam smiled right back at her. “Care for a trip to Wakanda?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the halfway point! Thanks so much for the kudos and subscriptions and comments. Every one is appreciated. I hope you'll enjoy the rest of the story. I'll continue to post daily, because this work is complete.

New Haven, Connecticut had a combination of parks, colleges, old buildings, immigrants, and churches that gave Bucky just a taste of home. Considered part of the larger NYC metropolitan area, Bucky could hop on his bike and get to Brooklyn or the new Avengers headquarters in less than two hours. The itch to be close was really strong on this day. The Fourth of July. Steve Rogers’ birthday. Bucky yearned to be on a rooftop with Steve, watching fireworks like they did when they were kids. He wondered if Steve would be watching them later tonight, if he’d be surrounded by friends and family or be alone. If he would remember being at Bucky’s side late into the summer night.

Two sets of footsteps were approaching him from behind. One belonged to a child, so unless his occasional pursuers had stooped to drastic new lows, Bucky was more curious than worried. People usually didn’t approach a one armed man sitting alone on a park bench.

“I grew up around here, you know.”

“I did not know that, Ms. Potts.”

Bucky stood and turned to face Pepper and her daughter, Morgan. He had maintained a respectful distance from them at Tony’s funeral, so he had not really interacted with either one of them in person. Although Bucky played no role in Tony’s death, residual guilt about Howard and Maria Stark almost brought him to his knees. As it was, when Morgan pulled up in front of him, memories of playing with his sisters caused Bucky to kneel so he could greet her at her own level.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Bucky. What’s your name?”

“Morgan. How do you know my mom?”

Bucky never liked lying to kids, so he tried his best. “We met at work.”

“Did you know my daddy?”

Bucky looked at Pepper, who merely smiled kindly at him. No hints there. “Not very well. I did know your grandpa when he was younger, though.”

“Do you like ice cream?”

Bucky had always appreciated the short attention span of children. “Of course.”

“Mom, we want ice cream!”

Pepper rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry, Bucky. She’s turning into a little tyrant.”

“With your permission, I’d be honored to buy her some ice cream.”

“Hold my hand!”

Morgan grabbed Bucky’s right hand and pulled him to an ice cream stand located about fifty yards from where he had been listening to the comforting sound of the Mill River. For a tiny park stand, there was an impressive array of ice cream and gelato choices.

“What flavor would you like?”

Morgan pointed at a label. “Rainbow.”

“Rainbow isn’t a flavor. What does it taste like?”

“Mom says it’s pure sugar.”

Bucky smiled, “And what flavor should we get for your mother?”

“Mom likes fruit because it’s healthy. But not strawberries. Daddy always reminded Mom she was allergic to strawberries.”

“Good to know. Thanks, Morgan.”

Carrying the ice cream cones, Bucky and Morgan returned to where Pepper was seated on the bench Bucky had vacated.

“Bucky picked out a flavor for you, Mommy.” Morgan excitedly handed a cone to her mother.

“Black currant and clotted cream. Morgan made sure to let me know you were allergic to strawberries.”

Pepper teared up a little as she thanked him. “And what did you get?”

“Gianduia. Haven’t tried it before.”

“It’s good to try new things.”

The two adults sat silently, enjoying their treats and watching Morgan sloppily eat hers while playing with the ducks on the riverbank. Bucky wasn’t much used to companionship after these several months of solitude, so he was grateful Pepper was easing him into conversation. He allowed himself to savor the flavors of chocolate and hazelnut, the cold creaminess on his tongue. A common treat these days, but such a rare treat in his youth that a simple ice cream cone seemed the peak of indulgence. 

“You know, I waited until you were in a 100-mile radius of New York before seeking you out, so you brought this upon yourself.”

Bucky smiled and crunched the last bit of his cone.

Pepper wiped some lingering ice cream from her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’ve been monitoring the bank accounts I set up for you. You’ve been incredibly frugal.”

“In this rebuilding world, there have been a lot of good opportunities to barter goods and services for labor. Most of the time, when I tapped an account, it was to let you know I was alive. Didn’t want you to have to worry about me.”

Pepper shot an appraising look at Bucky. She must have approved of what she saw because she followed up with, “You’re welcome back any time. I’m funding the tech for the team, you know. Sam is leading it. Whatever capacity you are comfortable with, we’d be glad to have you.”

“I’d like to help out, if I can. Not out in the field, but I could train recruits or something. Some day, maybe. I’m not ready yet.” Bucky was sure the shame showed on his face. “And I worry about harming the team with my reputation.”

“You know, I’m considered a master at public relations. You have no idea how many messes I got Tony out of.” Her smile betrayed the bittersweet nature of her memories. “I could help you out of the shadows.”

“Think it’s possible?”

“Of course.” She nudged him in the arm with her elbow. “You could always get a haircut, make yourself look like you do in all the history books. Remind the public you’re Bucky Barnes, not the Winter Soldier.”

Bucky put a hand to his hair. It was still long, pulled back in a half ponytail. Longer than it had ever been as the Soldier and a far cry from the short hair of the 1940s. Letting it continue to grow out had been one of his first choices as a free man again, and afternoons spent with Wakandan children braiding his hair had been amongst his first human interactions while he healed. “I think I’ll keep it.”

Pepper nodded in agreement. “I’m glad. You’re not either of those people. You’re allowed to find out who you are now. I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.”

Bucky was too choked up to force any words out, so he nodded his gratitude.

“You were really good with Morgan.”

“I had sisters.”

“I know.” Pepper giggled at his look of surprise. “Steve never really talked much about himself, but he would go on and on about you and the Howling Commandos. I feel like I know you better just sitting next to you for thirty minutes than I ever knew him.”

“He always had difficulty letting people get close to him.”

“How did you manage it?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“Stubborn, more like it?”

“I prefer _determined_ , ma’am.”

That earned another giggle from Pepper. Bucky was glad he could make her laugh. Almost made him feel like a complete human being again.

The sparkle in her eye dimmed a bit as she watched Morgan play. “Tony forgave you. I want you to know that. We found eyes-only SHIELD documents from the Sixties referring to you, hidden away in one of Howard’s many houses. Tony was devastated to learn they never attempted a rescue.” The look Pepper sent his way was full of sympathy, but not pity. She continued, “Then Natasha showed him the Russian file. We know what you went through, how hard you fought.” Pepper placed a gentle hand on his knee, seeming to need to assure herself of his well-being. “He couldn’t hold your actions against you after that.”

A sense of relief flooded through Bucky. He knew he had not willingly chosen to kill Howard and Maria, but that memory was still his, and the action had rendered Tony an orphan. When Tony died, he’d lost his chance to try to make amends. “Thank you for telling me. It does help, a bit.”

“He never forgave Steve, though, and I’m sorry for that.” 

Bucky knew Steve usually did not care about forgiveness where his actions were concerned, but Tony’s would have meant something to him. Not wanting to make Pepper feel worse about that, he hummed noncommittally. 

“How about you?”

Bucky was confused. “Hmm?”

“Have you forgiven Steve?”

“Nothing to forgive.”

Pepper started to say something, so Bucky kept going. “Look, Steve was tired. Really tired. Even before Thanos. If he had a chance to go after the life he really wanted all along, how can I begrudge him that?”

That saddened Pepper. “Seems to me you could be a little more selfish.”

Bucky didn’t know how to explain it. He’d always felt selfish about Steve. “You love someone, hoping they’ll love you back. But them feeling the same way isn’t conditional, you know? I just love him and want the best for him. I always have.”

From the expression on Pepper’s face, Bucky could tell she understood what he meant. She said, “But I get the feeling you still need him.”

“I do. Nothing’s ever going to change that. It’s just…”

Pepper reached out and touched his hand.

Bucky choked up a bit over his next words. “… I need my Steve, and I’m scared he’s gone forever. I can’t see him and find out he’s not the man I love. I’m just not up to facing that yet.”

“Trust me. I understand.”

Bucky regarded the woman next to him who had lost so much and yet was still so compassionate and optimistic. He sensed a kindred spirit in Pepper.

“Will you forgive me if I’m still upset with Steve on your behalf?”

“I’d never presume to tell a lady what to think.”

Pepper laughed. Score another point for human Bucky.

After a few moments, she said, “You know, the view of the fireworks is better from the top of that hill over there. You can see them all around the bay, even some from the city.”

“I know. But this is good enough for me.”

“Good enough to just be surrounded by memories instead of the show?”

Bucky looked her in the eye. “Is that why you’re here? Memories?”

“No. I’m here because I didn’t want you to be alone on Steve’s birthday.”

Such kindness. He could not believe he deserved it.

Bucky had spent the last several months attending to his own pain. He’d forgotten there were others out in the world who saw his pain and wanted to help soothe it, and perhaps by their actions, soothe some of their own. It’d be selfish to turn down such a chance.

Bucky smiled. “How about I buy us some dinner, and we find a good spot?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Pepper called Morgan over. When she reached them, Bucky asked, “What would you like for dinner?”

“Cheeseburgers!”

Bucky didn’t know why that response made a tear streak down Pepper’s face, but she nodded her approval. Bucky stood and reached his hand out to Morgan. “I’m sure we could find some of those. Wanna come help me carry ‘em, just like you did with the ice cream cones?

“Sure!”

Morgan grabbed Bucky’s hand, and Pepper joined up at her other side. The three strolled along the path. Bucky lived in that moment, surrounded by laughter in the park, appreciating the simple joy of the talking of a child, taking the first steps into a new friendship. Venturing into the future without Steve was something Bucky had never wanted, had never planned for. But days like this reminded him that even without Steve, Bucky just might be okay.


	8. Chapter 8

A conference on refugee relocation in Rome presented a good reason for Sam to bring Maria and Sharon with him on the trip. Sam did not have much experience with diplomacy and argued he needed assistance. Nick agreed, so the three traveled to Rome. While there, Sam delivered a speech, socialized with world leaders, pissed off the US delegation by reiterating his disapproval of the Sokovia Accords, and raised awareness of the plight of the impending influx of climate refugees as well as those still needing to be re-homed after the Blip.

Sam was exhausted.

“You awake back there, Cap?” Maria’s voice carried her amusement from her seat in the cockpit of the jet.

“Do I have to be?”

Sharon appeared in the doorway of the cockpit so she could see where Sam had been sleeping in the main cabin. “It would be useful, since we’re about to enter Wakandan airspace, and we need you to get us clearance.” 

It had been easier than Sam anticipated to bring Sharon in as part of his team. And after he’d heard what Sharon had been going through, he was glad to have given her the opportunity. He had known Sharon’s career had taken a hit after she helped Steve and the rest of them following Berlin, but apparently the news that she was related to Peggy Carter brought accusations of nepotism despite the fact Sharon hadn’t revealed the relationship until after her great-aunt’s death. Even in the wake of the Blip, Sharon’s return to her position at the CIA was perceived as favoritism. According to Maria, Sharon had been unhappy, but too professional to let it affect her performance. However, that also meant she jumped at the chance to be a diplomatic liaison for the new Avengers team. She’d been invaluable in Rome, but Sam worried whatever they learned in Wakanda was going to be a bigger challenge than a bunch of bureaucrats.

After Sam delivered the correct clearance codes, he remained in the cockpit with Maria and Sharon to witness their reaction as they flew through the Wakandan shield barrier.

“Wow!” It took a lot to impress Maria. And Sharon was practically pressed up against the windows as she looked all around them. Sam smiled, proud that Wakanda earned such reactions from these accomplished women.

Sharon finally tore her gaze from the landscape and looked up at Sam. “Was the Battle of Wakanda your first time here?”

“Yeah.”

“But not your last.”

It wasn’t a question, but Sam answered it anyway. “No.”

Maria exchanged a glance with Sam as Sharon mulled over her next question. With preparation for and attending the conference, there had not been the opportunity to catch Sharon up on the situation with Steve. Now that they were behind Wakanda’s protective shield, they could talk candidly. However, Sam resisted opening up that conversation. 

Sam was still struggling with the part of being Captain America that involved need-to-know information. He trusted Maria completely, but that was largely because he’d been working with her from the very first day he’d joined up with Steve and Natasha back in DC. Sharon had helped them in Berlin, to the risk of her personal and professional safety, but she’d been loyal to Steve. This was part of the Captain America role that Sam still had problems with. He was comfortable taking action, whether it be with his wings, the shield, or a pararescue jump kit. And he’d always been a good judge of character. His new role made him feel like he could not trust that judgment, though, like he needed permission to make a call on personnel or strategy or distribution of intel. He needed to get over that, he thought, and so he asked himself if he trusted Sharon. The answer: he did. He’d go with his gut.

Sharon finally asked, “So, why did the first battle with Thanos happen here?”

“Because Steve brought us here.”

“And he could do that?”

“He’d been a frequent visitor.” Sam breathed deep and took the plunge. “This is where Barnes was recovering.”

“And is he?” Sharon spoke sharply. “Recovered?”

“Yes,” said Sam. “Princess Shuri oversaw his treatment herself.”

“Doctor Banner speaks of her with great reverence,” Maria added. “If anyone could remove the triggers, she could.”

Sharon nodded curtly, then returned to looking out the window as they made the final approach to Birnin Zana.

After they landed, they were escorted to the royal residence. Sam, Maria, and Sharon joined Bruce where he was talking with Shuri in her lab. Sam enjoyed watching the wonder play over Sharon and Maria’s faces. Maria agreed with Sam that Sharon needed to be made aware of Steve’s actions and the fact he was alive, but they were waiting to find out what had caused Shuri to call them to Wakanda. Sharon was confused, but her excellent skills as an intelligence agent covered any discomfort, and she was clearly ready to deal with whatever came her way.

Although Sam himself wasn’t sure what they were walking into. _Code Purple_ was Shuri’s playful way of indicating something she thought could be a Thanos-level event. When Sam had laughed at the suggested name, he knew neither of them had ever expected a reason to use it.

The Dora Milaje led all of them to the throne room, the location heightening Sam’s apprehension even more. He noted Wanda and Vision were present already. T’Challa greeted the new visitors individually before asking them all to be seated, and he ascended his throne. “Our gratitude to those of you who came to Wakanda for this meeting and to those of you who have been working on this area of concern the past few weeks. Vision?”

Vision stood up, and Sharon gasped quietly. Sam would not have heard her if she hadn’t been seated next to him. He couldn’t blame her for her surprise, of course. She had never seen Vision in his human form. 

“As all of you know, I died six years ago. I was struck down by Thanos for the Mind Stone, to complete his Infinity Gauntlet. I died before the Snap, and therefore I was not among the Dusted nor was I brought back to life when Doctor Banner used a new gauntlet to restore fifty percent of life in the universe.”

Bruce blushed and ducked his head, as he always did when reminded of this deed.

Vision continued. “Doctor Cho and Princess Shuri then worked to restore me, using what Shuri had learned while trying to remove the Mind Stone from me during the battle. They were successful. I am here. I have my memories. I have my life back.” He reached out to squeeze Wanda’s hand as he said the last.

“I was curious to see if any of my memories were missing in the transfer, so with Shuri’s help, I compared my onboard storage, which was completely offline and dead during the Snap, to a current memory bank. There are subtle discrepancies.”

Bruce perked up. “How subtle?”

“Very. No actions in this timeline were actually altered, except for some minor time delays in which those actions occurred.”

Bruce followed up. “When did these discrepancies manifest?”

Vision responded. “1950.”

Bruce nodded, as if it made sense to him. “So, right after Steve decided to stay in the past.”

“Excuse me?”

The shock in Sharon’s voice only solidified Sam’s conviction that she had not known about the presence of Steve in her aunt’s life. Sam and Maria had previously discussed how this conversation should play out, with Maria breaking the news to her colleague and friend. 

Maria modulated her tone so it was factual, clinical. “After he returned the Infinity Stones, Rogers stayed back in 1949. From what he’s told us, he married your great-aunt Peggy Carter, they had twochildren, and he lived a comfortable life as a house-husband.”

Sharon shook her head. “That’s not true. Aunt Peggy was married to Daniel Sousa. I remember him.”

Sam said, “Not according to Steve.”

“I refuse to believe it.” Sharon was visibly upset, a far cry from her usual collected demeanor. Sam knew this must be tearing her up inside. “If that’s true, then Aunt Peggy didn’t just keep secrets, but was a liar. Who either lied to her family or made them lie. That isn’t the woman I knew.”

“I’m sorry, Sharon.” Sam tried to be as straightforward as possible, not betraying his own anger. “Steve told us this himself when he showed up as an elderly man after returning the Stones.”

“You both knew about this?” Her eyes flickered rapidly from Sam to Maria. “Steve is alive, and you didn’t tell me?”

Bruce jumped in. “Fury’s orders. I know Sam and Maria wanted to tell you before this.”

“And we needed a place to discuss it where we wouldn’t be monitored.”

Sharon understood the gravity of Maria’s tone. “Who else knows?”

“Rhodey, Secretary Ross, a few others with top secret compartmented security clearance, Pepper because the platform was on her property… and Barnes.”

Sharon pointed to their surroundings. “And Fury gave permission for the government of Wakanda to know?”

Sam said, “That was me. I found some of Steve’s things here while….” He carefully tapered off before mentioning the Bucky and Steve’s living quarters. “His decision to stay in the past didn’t add up to me, and I felt T’Challa and Shuri deserved to know that because of their generosity to Steve.”

Sharon shot Sam a look which informed him he’d be hearing more about this later. He responded with a grim smile to show her he understood.

Vision continued with his discussion of the discrepancies. “Captain Rogers never appears in the timeline himself, which seemed unlikely for a man who had remained in the past, considering there were two Steve Rogers in this timeline. So, Wanda and I used Shuri’s updated time-travel platform to travel back to 1950 to investigate in person.”

Maria leaned forward in her chair. “You used a time-travel device? Who authorized that?”

T’Challa spoke for the first time since this discussion began. “The nation of Wakanda does not require external authorization to use any of its technologies.”

Maria settled back in her chair. “My apologies, your highness.”

After T’Challa acknowledged Maria’s apology with a nod, Shuri rushed to assure everyone. “I do promise you, we used it only because of the discrepancies. There have been no other trips to the past.”

Wanda now spoke up. “I used my powers, and Viz used his shapeshifting abilities to get close to people at SHIELD, or the SSR at the time, I guess. Including Peggy Carter. Steve was not there.”

“Not at SHIELD?” Sharon asked.

“Not in the timeline.” Wanda allowed red tendrils to form between her fingers. “I could not sense Steve’s mind at all, other than the troubled dreams of the man beneath the ice.”

There was silence in the room at the confirmation that Steve had been aware at some level for the decades he was frozen.

After that uncomfortable moment, Sam said, “So, what were these minor alterations to the timeline?”

Vision replied, “They appear to stem from Peggy Carter herself. Her appointment to director of SHIELD was delayed by approximately one year, as were her marriage to Daniel Sousa and the births of their children.”

Wanda turned to face Sharon. “Your birth was delayed by six months.”

“Oh my god.” Maria placed her hand on Sharon’s arm. “Remember your birthday lunch this year?”

Everyone looked at Sharon.

Sharon explained. “Maria and Pepper took me out for lunch as a birthday present. We were sitting out on the patio on a beautiful sunny day, and I mentioned how it felt weird to not have it be cold on my birthday.” She folded her arms protectively over her chest. “But my birthday is in July.”

Wanda explained. “It used to be in January.”

“So, there have been noticeable ripples in the time stream.” Bruce was unhappy.

Vision nodded. “But nothing so major that large historically important events were affected.”

But Sam knew they would not all have been called to Wakanda if something else hadn’t been discovered. “So, what caught your attention enough to invite us here today?”

Vision took on a contemplative tone. “The delays in Director Carter’s life occur after a request to infiltrate a Soviet military installation in Vladivostok in 1950. That did not happen in our original timeline.”

Maria was curious. “What did the infiltration find?”

Vision shrugged. “Nothing. After consideration, her request was denied, and Carter received a minor reprimand for wasting time and resources. Everything else stems from that one action.”

Maria said out loud what everyone was thinking. “So, the real question is, what was in Vladivostok? 

“I was.” 

Everyone turned to face that voice. 

Bucky, having entered the room somehow unnoticed, was leaning on the wall near the door. He wore a soft long-sleeved shirt, pinned where he had removed his prosthetic arm. Sam guessed he had been in Wakanda for several days before this meeting. Bucky pushed his long hair away from his face. The motion gave him an excuse to look down as he said, “They kept me there in the early days.”

Sam felt a sense of relief. This made Steve’s actions more in line with his character. “So, Steve told Peggy Carter about Barnes.”

Vision said, “We don’t know that for sure. This is all conjecture, of course.”

“No, Steve told Aunt Peggy.” Sharon’s face showed she was deep in her memories. “The Wall of Valor.”

“At the old SHIELD headquarters?” Maria asked, “What about it?”

“I always wondered why Barnes was the first name there. He had never officially worked for the SSR or SHIELD, but Aunt Peggy made sure he was listed as their first casualty. She said they at least owed him that.” Sharon looked at Bucky with an apology in her eyes. “She knew.”

This whole situation still not not make sense to Sam. “So, why didn’t Vision and Wanda find Steve?”

Bruce replied. “I don’t know.”

Sam wasn’t satisfied with that answer. “I was there when this happened. Bruce, I heard how alarmed you were when the data showed Steve overshot his earliest time goal. Did you notice anything else that was weird or unplanned?”

“No.”

Maria added, “No obvious machine malfunction?”

“No.”

Sharon asked, “Did Steve tell you the order in which he was going to return the Stones?”

That was a great question. Sam nodded his approval at Sharon.

Bruce shrugged. “Kinda? He definitely knew which he would do first and which he would do last.”

Now, they were getting somewhere. Sam asked the follow-up question. “Which was the last?”

With complete certainty, Bruce said, “The Soul Stone. We were concerned it would require a sacrifice.”

Sharon hadn’t been briefed on Vormir. “A sacrifice?”

Sam was glad she asked, because he still wasn’t sure he understood what happened on Vormir. Bruce explained, “Apparently the Soul Stone requires a sacrifice of something you love in order to take possession of it. We weren’t aware of this until Nat...” Bruce choked up momentarily, as everyone in the room felt the pain of Natasha’s loss again. “We were hoping it wouldn’t need one to return the Stone, but Steve was willing to sacrifice his life, if that meant returning all of the Stones and ensuring the integrity of this timeline.”

Vision wanted clarification. “So, Captain Rogers had been fully briefed on the importance of maintaining the timeline?”

Bruce nodded. “Absolutely.”

T’Challa spoke next. “Bucky, did Captain Rogers tell you he was going to stay in the past?”

Sam was surprised when Bucky did not reply right away and grew concerned. Bruce must have felt the same way, because he asked, “You reassured me it was his choice?”

Shuri stood and walked over to where Bucky leaned against the wall. She grabbed his hand in both of hers. “What did Steve say to you?”

In the quiet and gentle fashion Sam now associated with him, Bucky said, “The night before the mission, he asked me if there was anything I would change in the past if I had the chance. We talked about Peggy. I really thought he was going back to her.”

Sam pointed out, “And he obviously did go to her. The question is, did he stay there and hide out for decades?”

“Aunt Peggy did not lie to our family for decades.” Sharon was adamant about that.

And Vision appeared to agree with her. “There is no evidence Peggy Carter was married to Steve Rogers. Daniel Sousa is listed on their wedding certificate and the birth certificates of their children, in both databases.”

Maria emitted a growl of frustration. “Why would Steve be lying about this to all of us?”

“He isn’t.” Bucky’s eyes filled with fear. “Steve went to Vormir last, as planned, and he didn’t come back.”

A stunned silence filled the room. Sam walked over to where Bucky had slumped against the wall. He and Shuri grounded Bucky by touch, trying to offset the unwarranted guilt obviously flooding through him. Bucky was trembling and curling in on himself. Shuri gripped his hand tighter, and Sam threw an arm across his shoulders.

“God, I’m so sorry.” Bucky breathed heavily. “I should have gone to see him. But I couldn’t. This is on me. I would have been able to figure this out.”

Sharply, but not unkindly, Sharon said, “Barnes, I’m pretty sure nothing that’s happened in your life since 1945 has actually been your fault.”

Sam was reeling. As much as he wanted to believe Steve would not have abandoned his family and team, he had talked to Steve since he returned. Older, yes, but the form of his gait and the cadence of his speech were Steve’s.

But as Sam thought back to their few conversations over the past year and Steve’s participation in the meeting with Secretary Ross, he realized nothing had been mentioned or implied that could not be gleaned from the record number of biographies in existence of Steve Rogers. And Maria and Rhodey had noticed that, too.

Sam’s arm tightened his grip around Bucky’s shoulders. “So, who the hell have we been dealing with this past year?”

Sam’s words seem to break something in Bruce, who started wringing his hands. “Oh, shit.”

_That can’t be good_ , Sam thought. “Bruce, what aren’t you telling us?”

Bruce looked around the room. “None of you were with us in New York, and we’ve kept it quiet, so you haven’t found out about it, have you?”

A sinking feeling in his gut, Sam asked, “Found out about what?”

The response from Bruce was not what anyone wanted to hear. “We need to contact Thor. I think we might have a Loki problem.”


	9. Chapter 9

Steve Rogers stood on an empty rooftop in New York City, the remaining Infinity Stones a heavy burden in his hands. The method of time-travel they had developed gave him as much time as needed to return each stone, which was useful given the imprecision of the time-targeting. However, the waiting for the right moment allowed his mind to wander. And, as always, his thoughts turned to Bucky.

Steve closed his eyes against the memory of the acceptance, the resignation on Bucky’s face when Steve had departed on this mission. Steve knew Bucky well enough to have caught a glimpse of heartbreak in his eyes before warmth and encouragement took hold in them.

Bucky thought Steve wasn’t coming back. And Steve couldn’t tell him differently, because this mission might not permit him to return. The stakes were too high, and Steve knew he might need to make the sacrifice play. He hoped he wouldn’t have to. He had spent the last five years not living. He wanted to get his life started again, even though it would be different than he had envisioned, without Nat and Tony a part of it.

“You aren’t supposed to be here. Where is Doctor Banner?”

The slender bald woman radiated a strength Steve knew not to underestimate. He inclined his head to her politely. “We thought it would be better to only risk one life on the return mission, ma’am.”

“I know who you are. There are three of you in NYC right now. Do not delay.” She held out her hand. “Any lingering will cause this timeline to fracture. A timeline isn’t built to hold more than one version of any individual at a time without magic greater than I am capable of to hold it together.”

Steve brought the green Time Stone out of a pocket, having left the case back on Asgard while avoiding the palace guards. He handed it over to the Ancient One, and she slipped it into the pendant around her neck.

“Did your gambit work?”

“Yes.”

“Did Strange survive?”

“Yes.”

She favored him with a small smile. “You’d better leave while you’re still winning.”

“Yes, thank you, ma’am.”

Steve started inputting the next set of coordinates into the device on his wrist.

“Captain Rogers, I know you’re tempted, but be careful with the power you’re playing with. The universe itself is still at risk.”

“Didn’t you meddle when you allowed Banner to leave with the Time Stone?”

“I was trusting in the man I knew would eventually hold onto the knowledge of time and the nature of reality. You, my young man, are going with your gut.”

“Served me well so far.”

She cocked her head. “Are you so sure? I do recall you were just defrosted a few weeks ago.”

Steve decided he liked her. “That just means I’m a survivor.”

“Good luck. Don’t fuck it up too much.”

Steve pressed the targeting button.

The Time Stone was safely where it belonged, leaving only one more stone in his pocket **.**

But before he returned the Soul Stone, Steve had one more stop to make.

***

Peggy opened up the door, gun in hand and aimed at Steve. “Who the hell are you?”

Strong, fierce, radiant. He could not help but smile. She hadn’t changed a bit from his memories. 

Smiling did not alleviate her concerns, as she demanded, “Tell me now.”

“Peggy, it’s me.” Steve held up his empty hands in front of him. “Please let me in, and I can explain.”

Peggy took the safety off and cocked the hammer. “I know how to use this.”

“I know.” Steve laughed as he remembered. “My shield took quite the beating from you before it got its first paint job.”

“Steve? Is it really you?” Peggy lowered the gun and removed her finger from the trigger. “Oh my god, Steve.”

She backed away from the door to allow him inside her home. 

“You’re alive?”

“Yes, but…. It’s complicated.”

She stopped in front of him as they reached the kitchen and gently touched his cheek. “You look older.”

“That’s because I am.”

A shared pot of tea later, Steve had told Peggy all he felt comfortable enough to say. That he was from the future, that everything turns out okay not only for him, but for her. 

“I’m afraid to tell you too much. It could change your future.”

“Would that be so awful?”

“You live a good life, Peggy. You do great things.” Steve paused for a moment. “You live a happy, fulfilling life.”

“And you?”

Steve exhaled sharply. “It takes me awhile, but I get there eventually.”

“Do you have any regrets?”

_So many. Where do I start?_ “Well, we never did have that dance.”

Peggy stood and walked over to a record player. After dropping the needle, she held out her hand. “Shall we?”

One last kiss. One first and last dance.

“I should go.”

“So soon?”

“I’ve been here too long. Just my presence could be altering the timeline.”

Peggy fixed him in place with a piercing stare. “Steven Grant Rogers, I know you too well. If the mission is as important as you say, you would not risk the outcome on a whim. Impulsive, yes, but you’ve never been selfish when it comes to getting a mission done. What has caused you to take such a desperate risk this time?” Her eyes widened, obviously recalling his most selfish mission, his most formative decision, the one that truly made him Captain America. “No, it can’t be.”

“Yes. Bucky’s alive, Peggy. He’s alive, and he’s being tortured even as we speak.” Steve’s hands trembled as he brought two envelopes out of his pocket. “Here are the coordinates of where Bucky is being held right now. After this, his whereabouts are hard to pin down for the next two decades. You have to save him, Peggy. What they are doing to him, it’s so awful.”

“But wouldn’t saving him change the future?”

“Yes, and I don’t care.”

“Steve...”

“We should have looked for him. _I_ should have looked for him.”

“There was no way we could have expected him to survive that fall.”

At this point, Steve grew angry at Peggy. “But you should have. By now, you should have figured it out.”

“Fuck, it was Zola, wasn’t it?” Frustration filled Peggy’s voice. “When he experimented on Barnes in Azzano?”

Steve nodded. “He was working on the serum. It worked on Bucky, to a certain extent. Enough to keep him from dying from the fall.”

“I knew that bastard was holding back, but Phillips was convinced he got everything from him. He even works with us now.” 

“I know.”

Peggy heard all of the recriminations in his voice. “Steve, there was no way we could have known.”

“Isn’t there? Shouldn’t we have guessed?” Tears began to spill down his cheeks,safe in the presence of the only person who’d ever seen him cry about Bucky. **“** I should have been able to reach him. I never should have let him fall. I should have thrown myself after him. I should have...”

Peggy put a soothing hand on his shoulder as he struggled to regain his composure. After a few moments, she asked, “What’s in the second envelope?”

“Me.” As Peggy’s eyes filled with hope, Steve stopped her. “But only if you find him. Promise me you’ll leave me in the ice if you don’t find him. Because if you can’t rescue him now, he’ll need me in the future.”

“If we find him and rescue you, won’t that irrevocably alter the future?”

“If you knew what they were doing to him… what they are going to make him do… It’s worth it. The risk to the future is worth it.”

“But Steve…”

“Trust me on this. And promise me, Peggy. Please, I’m begging you.”

Steve watched the turmoil on Peggy’s beautiful face, but she eventually said, “I promise.”

Steve heaved a sigh of relief. He knew he could trust her to keep her word to him. “Thank you.” He embraced her and kissed her forehead. “Thank you so much.”

He stood up and began to walk towards the front door. “I have to go.”

“Don’t forget to return my next-door neighbor’s clothes.” Peggy smiled through her tears.

“Right back on the clothesline where I found them.”

Peggy stood behind him as he reached for the door handle. “Goodbye, my darling.”

“Not goodbye. We’ll see each other again. Until then.” Steve bent down and kissed her hand. As he turned the door handle, Peggy reached out to grab his elbow.

“Steve?”

He turned to look at her one last time. He wanted to memorize her every feature. In his future, or more properly, his present, she was dead. It was breaking his heart to leave her, but they had already lived the end of their story. These few moments were a miraculous bonus to be treasured.

“Is Barnes waiting for you in the future? In your future?”

Steve thought of Bucky, waiting by the time platform. Healthy, whole, sad, and beautiful. 

“Yeah, he is.”

“Tell him I’m counting on him to keep you in line.” 

“He’s the only one who ever could.”

“I know.” Peggy’s voice held a wealth of understanding. Steve wondered if she knew, if she’d always known. “Be well, Steve. Good luck.”

“Thank you, Peg. For everything.”

Steve walked away and didn’t look back. He had one last mission.

***

Steve expected to see some sort of wraith when he arrived on Vormir, but he was unprepared to face Red Skull. For a moment, he was back in the Forties. He could feel the blast of heat in the fiery explosion in Azzano, the chill of the icy ocean reaching up towards his crashing plane. He shook his head to clear his thoughts of those memories. He had to be in top form, because this foe was more formidable to him than his fellow Avengers could have foreseen. 

“Captain Steven Grant Rogers, son of Sarah, son of Joseph. I have been waiting for you.”

“Then you know what I’m here for.”

“You are here to return the Soul Stone.”

“Yes.”

“You have to return the Stone exactly when it was taken.”

“I mean to.”

“To do so, you must enter the Soul World itself. To do so, you must sacrifice something you love.”

Steve had prepared for this part, based on what Clint had told him about what happened with Nat. He knew returning the Soul Stone might require a terrible transaction. Steve was prepared to give up something he loved. He also knew he was a horrible liar, so he had to tell the truth. 

“I just left Peggy Carter behind in the 1940s, even though I could have remained there to live a life with her.”

It was all true. 

“And you love her.”

“Yes.” It was true. It was a truth of his life that he loved Peggy Carter.

The Red Skill smiled. “You forget, Captain, that I know you from before.”

In the mist, an image formed. Red Skull conjured Steve in the Valkyrie, ready to give up his life. 

“My essence was being incorporated into the Soul World and bore witness to your actions. You put the plane in the water, Captain. You did not fight to survive to be with Agent Margaret Elizabeth Carter.”

The image in the mist changed, and Steve gasped. He could see himself next to Bucky across the raging inferno in Azzano. “But for him, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, you fought an entire army by yourself, just in the hope he was alive. And alive he is, is he not? Waiting for you to return to your place and time?”

Steve knew a lie would be disastrous, not just to him, but possibly to humanity, to the universe. He forced himself to admit the truth. “Yes.”

“And that shall be your sacrifice, Captain Rogers. Your future with Sergeant Barnes.”

The mist moved towards him and started to rise around Steve. _I am so sorry, Buck._

Red Skull proclaimed, “And thus, the Soul Stone is restored.”

Obscured by the fog and Steve’s own regrets, a figure in green slipped away from the scene, to jump to 1949.


	10. Chapter 10

Bucky hadn’t seen Steve in over a year. He knew it had been the best decision for him personally, but now as he approached the cabin with the rest of the team, he felt like a coward. 

Apparently, Sam was capable of reading Bucky’s thoughts, because he leaned into his side and quietly said, “This isn’t your fault.”

“But wouldn’t I have been able to tell?” 

In that instant, Bucky’s greatest fear is that he wouldn’t have known the difference.

“I’m going to briefly go into counselor mode, okay? Your first duty in recovery is to yourself. And yeah, you can’t completely tell all your obligations to fuck off, but you didn’t do that. Steve was your friend, not your job. And what he did to you, did to all of us, was pretty shitty.” Sam sighed. “I spent more time with him, and I didn’t recognize anything was wrong.”

“Not your fault either, Wilson.” Bucky knew a lot of the team was feeling some complicity at this point, but Sam didn’t deserve that guilt. “Whatever is going on is only the fault of whoever is perpetrating it, right?”

“You’ve been listening to me when I speak?”

“Occasionally.”

Sam smiled and nudged Bucky in the side. Bucky realized he’d made a friend in this man. At least, something good had come out of this whole painful ordeal.

The black SUV carrying Bucky, Sam, Thor, Valkyrie, and Maria pulled up to the cabin. As previously agreed upon, Maria and Sam got out first, to assure Steve all was well and to gain entry into the cabin. Steve was expecting them, as the team had planned this operation for his previously scheduled monthly check-in meeting.

Bucky watched through tinted windows as Steve opened the door and smiled at Sam and Maria. It hit Bucky like a punch in the gut. That was Steve, the older Steve he thought would never come to fruition in the countless hours spent nursing a young, sickly Steve through the cold Brooklyn winters. Is it any wonder a part of him wanted this to be real? In Bucky’s mind, an elderly Steve still represented a miracle. 

Maria followed Steve into the cabin, and with a subtle glance back at the SUV, Sam left the door almost imperceptibly ajar. It was time. Bucky inhaled and exhaled deeply.

“You alright?” 

Valkyrie had been kind to Bucky as they prepared this op. Bucky knew she recognized the damage in him as something she also dealt with. She was another old soldier who deserved rest. He did his best to compose himself, but wouldn’t lie to her. “Not really.”

She barked out a laugh, and Thor looked at Bucky with approval. “It is always best to go into battle without delusions.”

“You really think that could be Loki in there?”

From Steve’s stories about this Asgardian god, Bucky knew Thor was uncharacteristically sober as he said, “Our people are not like yours. And our mother was a witch, as well as the queen of Asgard. It was she who trained Loki in the magical arts. My brother is dead, the one from this timeline. But no Loki exists who is bound by the rules of a single timeline.”

Steve had spoken of Loki as a formidable opponent, one who was a particular weakness for Thor. “Are you ready for what we might find in there?”

“There is no preparing for Loki.” Bucky heard the weight of a long, fraught history in Thor’s words.

“C’mon, my lord. Let’s get this over with.” Valkyrie clapped Thor on the back and then hopped out of the truck. Bucky and Thor followed. 

“You first, Barnes.”

“Why?”

“If it is Steven, he will be glad to see you. If it is Loki, it is less likely he will kill you on sight.”

Valkyrie shrugged in agreement with Thor. 

“Great.” Bucky muttered as he opened the door. 

Years of training had taught him to be silent on his feet. Even with Steve’s enhanced hearing, he’d have difficulty detecting Bucky’s quiet footsteps in the entryway. He took a quick moment to survey his surroundings. The furnishings were clean, and there were fresh flowers in a vase. But Bucky knew Pepper sent a regular cleaning service to the cabin, so cleanliness and order were to be expected. It was the jacket, though, on the coat rack that made Bucky pause. There was a subtle layer of lint, of dust, as if the jacket had not been worn for a very long time. It was the sort of detail Bucky had only ever noted previously in rooms full of set dressings. 

Nobody lived in this cabin.

He gestured for Thor and Valkyrie to follow him. Then Bucky entered the living room.

When he saw him, Steve’s face lit up. “Bucky, it’s good to see you.”

Bucky did his best not to flinch, but he was incapable of smiling at the warmth in Steve’s voice. If this was truly Steve, Bucky had wasted precious time when he could have been loving him. If this wasn’t Steve, he had wasted time when he could have been saving him. Emotions overwhelmed him, rooting him in place.

Steve started to get up from his chair, but when he saw Thor and Valkyrie behind Bucky, he fell back into his seat. “Well, this is a surprise.”

The tone changed from Steve’s voice to something sharper and accented. Then Steve faded away, changed into a pale man with long, dark hair and elegant black clothing. He grinned and waved. “Hello.”

Sam jumped to his feet, as did Maria, with her gun drawn. Loki rolled his eyes at them.

Thor moved around Bucky, who leaned against the nearest wall for support. He forced himself to pay attention to the conversation in front of him, knowing any bit of information gleaned could be important in rescuing Steve.

“Loki, what are you doing here?”

“More than you, dear brother.”

The vitriol in Loki’s voice surprised Bucky. He looked around and noted his wasn’t the only one. Thor motioned to Maria to lower her weapon, but everyone remained standing, ready to fight.

“Seriously, Loki, what is going on?” Valkyrie was clearly frustrated with the posturing and wanted to get on with the confrontation.

“I had to leave Earth in my own timeline, so I started jumping around, seeing different possibilities, different pasts, different futures. Looking for a new world to rule, perhaps even become the true leader of Asgard. I eventually landed in this timeline.” Loki strode to stand immediately in front of Thor. “And what did I find? Our mother, dead. Our father, dead. Asgard, our home, destroyed. And you, my brother, had left our people in the care of a rogue Valkyrie.”

Loki turned to Valkyrie, all effusive charm. “No offense, my lady, you are indeed worthy, but my brother and I were destined to be leaders of Asgard.”

“But why are you interfering?” Thor demanded.

“Right now, the leaders of this world are isolating the Asgardians in that tiny village in Norway ‘for their own safety’.” Loki sarcastically used air quotes. ”They want to turn away the rest of us before we can land on this world.”

Thor turned to Valkyrie. “Is this true?”

“Yes, unfortunately, it is.” She sighed in disgust.

As Thor glared at her, Maria added, “There is concern the public at large would not react well to aliens living on Earth after the horrors Thanos wrought here.”

Thor did not hide his dismay. “But they fought alongside humanity against Thanos. Does not that earn them fair treatment?”

Maria looked embarrassed, as Valkyrie replied, “I do not think you are as familiar with the leaders of this world as you should be.”

“So, you are here for noble purposes?” Sam was skeptical.

Bucky shared Sam’s skepticism. Loki had never been known for doing the right thing. And perhaps he was telling the truth. Perhaps Loki just wanted the best for his people. That didn’t answer the most important question. Bucky had to know. There had to be a reason. “Why pretend to be Steve?”

Loki lifted his chin, but evaded Bucky’s gaze. “Opportunity. A glitch in this timeline due to the time-travel. It led me to the Soul World while he was bargaining to restore the Stone.”

“I believe the last part. You saw Steve on Vormir, sure.” Bucky had died before, so pissing off a god wasn’t much of a deterrent. “But you could have been Ross or the president or the Secretary-General. An elderly Steve Rogers just seems a little boring for you.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. Seems inefficient.”

“Well, perhaps I didn’t mind ruining Rogers’ reputation.”

Bucky sucked in a sharp breath. If Loki wanted Steve hurt, it was possible there was no hope left to save him.

Thor apparently had the same concern. “What did you do to Steven?” He narrowed his eyes as he approached his brother. Suspicion laced his next question. “Why did you have to leave your timeline?”

Loki leaned towards, obviously not intimidated by Thor. “Because you, who should know better, allowed fools to meddle in time.”

“Steve did something to alter your timeline?”

Loki looked at Sam. He looked at Bucky and Maria and Valkyrie. “None of you were there.” He focused intently on Thor. “You don’t know what Rogers did, do you?”

“What did he do?”

“When I realized how much the timeline diverged in 2012, I went back to observe your romp though New York City. Rogers was the turning point.” He spat angrily at Thor. “He confronted his younger self.”

Thor nodded. “Steven mentioned he had encountered himself during our effort to retrieve the Tesseract.”

“It wasn’t an encounter. It was a battle.” Loki scoffed. “It was quite something to see, matched blow for blow. Eventually, the younger Rogers had yours in a head lock. Then he whispered something, and the younger Rogers let him go, stunned by his words.”

The room was so quiet, Bucky could hear his heartbeat. He could hear all of their heartbeats.

Loki finally continued. “After you left, in my 2012, Captain America began to tear the world apart looking for a ghost. That Earth is on fire, and he was the catalyst, all because your Captain America defeated himself the best way he knew how, by whispering Bucky Barnes’ name.”

Bucky was transfixed by the look in Loki’s eyes as the trickster stepped towards him. “Because is every timeline, in every universe, Steve Rogers loves Bucky Barnes selfishly. And in every timeline, in every universe, Bucky Barnes loves selflessly.”

“Damn.” Sam looked at Bucky, who couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“I knew I could count on your love, Barnes. Being so willing to let him go so he could be happy. I knew I’d be on my own here, able to plant the seeds to establish a new world for my people. I just hoped I’d have longer.”

Sam walked to Bucky’s side and placed a warm, comforting hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Not your fault.”

But wasn’t it? If Bucky had just been strong enough to face Steve sooner, maybe he would have seen through the deception. If Steve was still alive on Vormir, what torment had he been experiencing while Bucky was finding himself safely back home in the States. 

Loki sensed Bucky’s turmoil. “I know how it feels to learn everything you knew about your life, your identity, is false. And I am truly sorry for the pain you are feeling now because of this charade.”

It was a surprising amount of compassion from a god.

Thor shared Bucky’s surprise as he yelled at his brother, “So, you regret your actions after all?”

Loki shook his head. “I know what you think of me. Maybe you even mourn the version of me that you lost, but I can assure you… he and I are the same in the choices we make here.” 

Sadness overwhelmed Thor’s face, and Bucky sympathized with this man who had lost _everything_ and could not get it back with the snap of a gauntlet.

Loki saw the emotions written all over Thor and seized his chance. “We were meant to roam the stars, not be landlocked in a tiny village on this mundane world. Brother, lead our people. You and this Valkyrie, your appointed Queen, can commandeer a starship and find a suitable world to forge a new Asgard. Then you can continue doing whatever it is you’ve been doing these past months.”

To everyone’s surprise, Valkyrie sided with Loki. “There has to be a suitable unpopulated…” 

Loki interrupted with a shrug. ”Ehhh?”

Valkyrie emphasized, “Yes, _unpopulated_ world out there.” She elbowed Thor in the side. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

Thor appeared remarkably ill at ease. “I am not sure I am capable of this endeavor.”

“Your people still look up to you.” Valkyrie spoke supportively. “All of us would welcome you back.”

“My brother challenges my ability to lead and has attempted to do so in my absence. I have left my people, I have left you, for my own selfish reasons, and yet you continue bravely on.” Thor lowered his gaze to the floor. “I do not deserve to lead you.”

Then, Loki said, “Hold out your arm, brother. Find out if you are worthy.”

Thor looked up in surprise. Loki nodded encouragingly at him, with a small smile on his face. Thor raised his right hand.

There was a rustling elsewhere in the cabin. Bucky, Sam, and Maria all flattened against the wall as a whooshing noise approached the living room. 

And suddenly, the hammer crashed into Thor’s outstretched hand. “Mjolnir. How did it get here?”

“I brought it here with me.” Loki tipped his head towards Thor. “Good-bye, my dear brother.” In an explosion of light, Loki popped away.

“Good-bye, brother.” Thor’s whisper was likely inaudible to anyone other than Bucky, who heard the pain at yet another unwilling separation.

Which, of course, brought Bucky’s thoughts back to Steve. He fought back the tears suddenly threatening fall down his face.

“Hey, man, talk to me.”

“I cannot tell you what it’s done to me to feel like I didn’t know him anymore. That I couldn’t be sure about Steve anymore.” Bucky looked at Sam, who put a comforting hand on his elbow. “I knew him before I knew myself. And I’ve been so fucked-up, thinking all that work I’d done to get my memories back and my brain in order was for nothing. That’d I’d been wrong about him, because he was the only thing I was ever sure of, and I never thought he’d leave me.”

“He didn’t leave you.”

Bucky reached out to clasp Sam’s shoulder. “He didn’t leave us.”

Sam grinned. “Let’s go get our boy.”

“Damned right.”

Bucky and Sam walked over to the others. Maria was on a secure phone, catching up Fury on the latest events, while Valkyrie watched Thor play with the hammer with a smirk on her face.

Sam cut directly to the heart of the matter. “How do we get to Vormir?”

“The old fashioned way.” Bucky laughed, his stress about the upcoming mission combined with its ridiculousness finally hitting home. “A spaceship.”


	11. Chapter 11

Training to fly the spaceship hadn’t taken very long. It was a Kree ship, brought to Earth by Asgardian refugees. Thor had set the autopilot and instructed Sam and Bucky on the basics: powering up and down, minor landing adjustments, communications systems. The ship was small, and its cockpit bore a notable familiarity to other craft Sam had flown over the years. But this was different, because outside the cockpit windows was the deep expanseof space instead of blue skies. 

Sam was in the pilot’s seat, with Bucky next to him in the co-pilot’s. They were alone in the spacecraft, not willing to risk any more lives on their quest to find Steve. Sam snuck a peek at Bucky, who had been in much the same pose for the past hour, looking out the window with a rapturous expression on his face.

Sam chuckled, and Bucky managed to tear his gaze from the stars. At Sam’s raised eyebrow, Bucky excitedly said, “We’re in space.”

“That we are, Barnes.”

“Hey, I understand you were born after the first Moon landing, so this is all normal to you…” Bucky broke off as Sam started to laugh.

“I’m freaking out as much as you are.” Sam sighed and enjoyed the view for a moment. The beauty overwhelmed him. “Man, we’re in space.”

“Yeah.” Bucky’s smiled dimmed. “How much longer till we land on Vormir?”

“Forty-eight Earth minutes.” Sam gestured at a readout on the control panel. “Thor kindly reprogrammed all of the output into Earth units.”

Bucky shook his head as he looked back out of the window. “So many impossible things have happened to me over the years. I keep thinking it has to come to an end some time.”

Sam heard the melancholy in Bucky’s voice and knew he was thinking of the mission ahead of them. He tried to sound more confident than he felt. “I have a feeling it won’t end today.”

Sam become the subject of a penetrating stare. Then Bucky spoke softly. 

“You’re doing a good job as Captain America. Made good judgment calls, assembled agood team. Followed your gut on when to disobey orders.”

Sam was surprised, but undeniably pleased, by this turn in conversation. “I just keep trying to do what Steve would do.”

“You don’t need to be more like Steve. You’re doing a good job as Sam Wilson.” 

Sam felt that sinking sensation in his gut when thinking about his inherited role. “Captain America is a symbol, a superhero”. 

“Falcon was a superhero, too. You’ve got this, Sam.”

“Steve was a better leader.”

Bucky clearly wanted to say something, but hesitated. Sam need to hear it. “What?”

Bucky gnawed on his lower lip before deciding what to say. “Steve could be a great leader, but never really invested in it. He thought he worked better on his own.”

Sam defensively responded, “He was great with our team.”

“I’m not saying he wasn’t. But he never attained a true comfort level with all of you. Steve never really believed, deep down, that he was worthy of a team. That people would follow him.”

“Not even you?”

Bucky’s eyes lost a bit of their focus as he reached back into his memories. “People in the old neighborhood thought I was nice to let Steve hang out with me. He heard them talk. They never saw how grateful I was to be his friend. I’m not sure he truly trusted in it, either. And if he couldn’t believe me, of all people, how could he have ever truly thought people wanted him just for him?”

Sam thought back to the day of the battle over the Potomac. Steve’s speech had inspired a revolt, and Sam had envied his easy leadership since that day. Hell, he’d followed Steve around the world, in violation of the law, the feeling in his heart and his gut based on that speech. But now, in hindsight, it was clear Steve had meant what he said about the price he was willing to pay, not knowing if anyone else would agree.

Bucky observed Sam as he was putting the pieces together. “Let me put it to you this way. It would not have come as any surprise to Steve that the Howling Commandos and I were mentioned so prominently in his biographies, but he would have been shocked to have been more than an honorable mention in ours. Because he thought we were the special ones, and he never moved on from being that sickly, stubborn kid who only knew how to be on his own. And if you didn’t see him that way, it’s because he didn’t let you.”

Sam knew Steve wielded his facade like his shield and felt more than a little guilt about how much of that act he bought into. “How about you, Barnes? Was he still that kid to you?”

“I loved that scrawny kid from Brooklyn.” Bucky smiled sadly. “I still do.”

“What did you see in him?” Because as much as he had tried, Sam couldn’t envision Steve before the serum, and he had at his side the only man alive who knew who Steve Rogers had really been.

“He was the kind of guy that would have helped all of those hateful people who bullied him if something bad happened to them, because it would have been the right thing to do.” Bucky explained, as if it were the simplest truth in his world.

And suddenly Sam realized they had to have the conversation about what awaited them on Vormir. Bucky knew it, too, because he leaned towards Sam and joked, “So don’t do anything down there, because I don’t love you and your sacrifice would be in vain.”

“Barnes…”

Bucky interrupted him. “Seriously, though, you know it has to be me, right?”

“We don’t know what will happen down there.”

“I do. The universe has wanted it to be me _or_ Steve, not me _and_ Steve, ever since I received that damned draft notice. It has to be me.”

Sam was not willing to accept that. “We’ll see how it plays out.”

“If there is a chance to save him, I’m taking it.” Bucky’s voice trailed off, becoming a whisper. “He’s saved me so many times.”

The two men remained silent until an indicator started flashing and a planet loomed in front of them.

Both burst into nervous laughter. “That’s a planet, Wilson.”

“Sure doesn’t seem welcoming.”

“Did… did we already spend five years here?”

“I don’t think so.” Sam’s heart rate increased. “Why?”

“Just… something seems familiar.”

Sam didn’t have time to ask what Bucky meant because the ship began a rapid descent towards the ground. Both men gripped the arms of their chairs as they plummeted towards the coordinates provided by Clint. Quicker than Sam would have thought possible, they landed safely.

Sam couldn’t help but be amazed. “We are on the surface of another planet.”

“Not even one in our solar system.”

“I wish we had the time to enjoy it.” The two men shared a brief, wistful glance at each other.

They geared up, although they knew weapons would likely be of no assistance to them here. As they were about to open the hatch, Bucky asked, “You sure the air is safe to breathe?”

“Um, Clint said it was.” Sam pushed a button. “Here goes nothing.”

The door opened and a ramp extended towards the ground. After a brief hesitation, Bucky walked down the ramp. When he reached the bottom, he gingerly placed one foot, then the other, on the ground. He turned and flashed an irrepressible grin back up at Sam. “I’m standing on another planet!”

Sam observed Bucky, a man who believed he was going to his death, willingly sacrificing himself to save the man he loved, and yet still experiencing wonder in the moment. It was a lesson Sam wanted to take to heart in his duties as Captain America. From Steve, he’d learned about duty and justice. From Natasha, he’d learned adaptability and to never underestimate anyone. And from Bucky, he was learning about resilience and capacity for joy, remarkable for someone who had suffered so much. Sam forced himself to be playful as he hoped they both survived this day. “Did they know there were other planets back in your day?”

“Fuck you, Wilson.”

Sam joined Bucky on the ground and was helpless to prevent a smile at the fact he was on another world. He was about to say something when Bucky embraced him, a quick brotherly hug. “Thanks for everything you’ve done for me and Steve, Sam. You’re a good man.”

“You’re a good man, too. You know that, right?”

Bucky avoided answering by squeezing Sam’s shoulder, then the two men began to ascend the cliff face. Clint had told them there was a rocky, temple-like structure at the top and there might be someone there to greet them.

Clint was right.

Sam and Bucky quietly approached the figure shrouded in a flowing hood and cloak. When the figure turned around, Bucky surprised Sam by laughing. “Of course.”

“Barnes, who is that?”

“One of my personal demons.” When Bucky noticed Sam wasn’t satisfied, he added, “Red Skull. Johann Schmidt. The man who orchestrated my torture back in the war.”

“Jesus.” A shiver ran through Sam as he suspected this new complication would prevent Bucky from getting out of this alive. “How the hell did he get here?”

As the two men drew closer to him, Red Skull finally spoke. 

“Samuel Thomas Wilson, son of Darlene, son of Paul. Welcome to Vormir.”

Sam figured it wouldn’t hurt to nod.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, son of Winifred, son of George. I have been expecting you.”

This, more than the chill of the wind raised goosebumps on Sam’s skin. He glanced over to Bucky, who was staring at Red Skull. Bucky took a step forward and motioned for Sam to stay back.

“Sergeant Barnes, you are here for Captain Rogers.”

“Yes.”

“You crossed vast distances between the stars in the slim, almost certainly futile hope to save him.”

“Yes.”

“And you are aware this world demands sacrifice for any transactions.”

“Yes.”

“Are you willing to sacrifice yourself to save Captain Rogers?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know he is still alive?”

Bucky took a deep breath and surveyed his surreal environs. His body language relaxed. “I feel him.”

Sam watched as an air of contentment settled over Bucky. 

Red Skull asked, “Are you so certain you would die just in the small chance he could live?”

Bucky walked over to the edge of the cliff and looked over. “Falling off of a cliff.” Sam heard him chuckle before he said, ”This isn’t even the first time I’ve done this.”

“Barnes, don’t.”

Sam’s breath caught in his throat as Bucky turned his back to the cliff and favored Sam with a jaunty salute and a bright smile. “It’s gonna be okay, Sam.”

Then Bucky threw himself backwards.

Steve appeared by Sam’s side, just in time to see Bucky disappear. 

“No!”

Sam grabbed Steve’s arm, struggling to hold him in place. He gave Steve a quick once over. He seemed healthy, but emotionally shattered. “Steve, stay with me.”

“I’m sorry.” Steve clasped Sam’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze while removing it from his arm in spite of Sam’s best efforts. “You don’t understand, Sam. I can’t lose him again. If I do, I’ll never really be alive. This time I’m going after him, the way I should have all those years ago.”

Sam watched in horror as Steve broke free and ran towards the edge of the cliff, not looking at Red Skull, not breaking stride, flying over the edge at full speed.

A mist started to rise around Sam. He couldn’t move, not to raise his arms or to turn his head. He found it difficult to breathe. Red Skull’s voice surrounded him. “It seems the Soul Stone has been satisfied. Leave now, and do not return. Next time, you will not be so lucky.”

When the mist cleared, Sam was back in the cockpit of the spacecraft.

And he was not alone.

“Steve?”

Sam heard Bucky’s voice, and he turned to see the two men staring at each other.

“Oh my god, Bucky?”

Sam’s eyes filled with tears as he watched Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes pat each other down, performing a quick once-over for injuries like they must have done a thousand times before. And then they embraced. They rested their foreheads together, breathing in each other’s scent. The intimacy of the gesture caused Sam’s heart to swell with happiness to see his friends united.

Bucky eventually pulled away and tilted his head towards Sam. Sam suddenly had his arms full of super soldier. The tears flowed down his own cheeks then. “It is so good to have you back, Steve.”

“Thank you.” Steve clapped Sam on the back and stepped away. “Thank you both for finding me.”

Bucky nodded, lost for words as he quickly wiped tears from his eyes.

Steve sobered at that. “How long?”

Sam answered. “It’s been a little over a year.”

Steve turned towards Bucky, his face full of dismay. He reached for Bucky, who stepped back. “I’ll let the two of you catch up. I’m gonna get some rest, if that’s okay with you, Sam?”

“Yeah.” Sam gave Bucky a quick hug. “I’m glad you’re still with us.”

“Me, too.” Bucky ducked his head shyly, then disappeared into the back of the ship.

Steve stared in the direction Bucky had taken. Sam knew Steve wanted to follow, but Bucky clearly needed some time alone. He put his arm around Steve’s shoulders and said, “C’mon, Steve. Be my co-pilot. Let’s go home.”


	12. Chapter 12

Three days after their return to Earth, Sam found himself walking up to the porch of the cabin again where Steve, the real Steve now, was staying while he adjusted to being back in the world. Pepper had assured there would be no disturbances. Sam was pretty sure that he, Maria, Bucky, and Pepper were the only ones who knew Steve was there. Sam had informed those involved in uncovering Loki’s trickery that the mission had been successful, but Fury had not cleared anyone else to know any details. The news of Steve’s return had to be tightly contained. There was still a lot to decide, including how to deal with the few governmental officials who knew Steve Rogers was “alive” this past year. Sam was pushing for the “Hey, you were manipulated by Loki because you believed in his anti-immigrant, authoritarian views while we figured out something was wrong”-strategy. The whole team wanted to bring Ross down, and maybe they would.

But Sam didn’t want to focus on that right now. Today was all about his friend.

Steve hugged Sam as soon as he opened the door. “Good to see you, Captain.”

Sam felt his cheeks warm. “Don’t you start, Rogers.”

Steve knew Sam had taken on the role of Captain America. That’s one of the reasons they were meeting up today. Sam followed Steve into the living room. He could not believe, just a week ago, Loki’s deception had still been in place. So much had changed since.

“Coffee?”

“Sure, thanks.”

While Steve went into the kitchen, Sam looked around the living room. There hadn’t been much time for Steve to leave his own mark, and he was probably considering this cabin an impersonal transitionary stop, more like a hotel than a possible home. Even the landscape painting was still there. Sam pulled up short in front of it, though. A stick figure Captain America using his shield to hit a stick figure Loki had been drawn in.

“I think it’s an improvement.”

Sam grabbed a mug from Steve and sat down. “I agree.”

Steve gestured at the case Sam had placed next to the couch. “That it?”

Sam nodded and handed it over. 

“May I?”

“Go ahead.”

Steve opened the case and brought out the shield Sam still considered borrowed, not owned. Steve tested its balance, ran his hands over the sides, spun the shield to inspect all sides. “This isn’t one I used.”

“Any idea where it came from?”

“Honestly? I bet it’s one of the versions Tony worked on while we were estranged.”

“So, this shield didn’t travel through time, but probably came from that workshop in the backyard?”

Steve shrugged his shoulders carelessly. “Probably.”

Sam moaned. That meant it was possible they could have done an inventory check or a chemical analysis and revealed the deception immediately. He was saved from admitting this oversight by the ringing of his phone. He winced in silent apology to Steve and took it from his pocket. Hill’s name was on the screen.

“Sorry, Steve. I have to take this.”

“Understood.”

Sam walked out to the front porch. “Hey, Hill.”

“Got a lead on a new recruit.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Danvers made a recommendation.”

“I’ll look into it when I return to the compound tonight.”

“Yessir, Captain America, sir.”

Sam rolled his eyes at the sarcasm in her voice. “Thank you, Agent Hill.”

“You’re welcome, Wilson.” Now, Sam could hear her smile. “Kick Rogers’ ass for me.”

“Will do.”

Sam returned to the living room, where he found Steve staring into his coffee mug.

“Do you enjoy being Captain America?”

Sam knew Steve would ask him this and had tried to come up with an honest answer. “I don’t know that _enjoy_ is the right word. But I’ve been able to do some good, helping people after all of us were returned.”

“Yeah?”

Sam told Steve about his initiatives - home building and affordable housing for the displaced, mental health counseling, food distribution, climate activism. “Seeing the shield gives people hope. I like being a part of that.”

“Always knew you were the right choice to carry on the name.”

“So I heard.”

They could no longer dance around the person not there with them.

“How is Bucky?”

Sam knew Bucky wouldn’t mind it if he reassured Steve about his well-being. “He’s fine.”

“Where is he?”

Sam threw up his hands, palms forward, in a defensive gesture. “You need to give him time, Steve.”

Never known for his patience, Steve pushed. “But I’m back, Sam. The two of you brought me back. I’m right here.”

Sam took a good, long look at Steve. There hadn’t been time for a conversation between Tony’s funeral and Steve’s mission to return the Stones. Now he had a chance to see the additional years of life on Steve: his face was thinner, his body was leaner, and weariness permeated his voice. Sam knew Steve had blamed himself, had isolated himself, during the time the others were in the Soul World. Those five years lived had taken a toll on Steve, physically and emotionally. And maybe that meant Steve would finally listen.

“Barnes can’t trust that right now, Steve. It’s hard enough for me. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for him.”

“But Sam…”

All of the frustration Sam had been holding back threatened to spill out, so he knew it was time to say his piece, hoping Steve would be receptive. He forced his voice to remain steady. “Look, Steve, I was in Wakanda, standing in an apartment I didn’t know you had, looking at your designs for your future home with Barnes. And T’Challa and Shuri told me about your plan to ask me to take over as Cap, and I had to tell them I didn’t know about any of it. Do you know how that made me feel?”

Steve’s jaw had developed that stubborn set his team knew so well. “I didn’t tell you about Bucky because I needed to keep him safe. The best way to do that is if nobody knew where he was.”

“There you go.” When Steve looked at him with confusion, Sam said, “You compartmentalized. That’s how you run ops, sure. That’s how you lead a team, fine. That isn’t how you be a friend.”

“Sam…”

“Not to mention you never asked me if I wanted to be Captain America.”

Steve slumped, hands between his legs, head bowed. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are, now that it’s been pointed out to you.” Sam could tell Steve was working up a full head of steam, so he decided he had nothing to lose by continuing. “Barnes went for years feeling he couldn’t trust his own mind. And then the only person he ever completely trusted betrayed him.”

Steve raised his head to glare at Sam. “I didn’t…”

“But you did. Somehow you did. Because there was a big part of him that found it easy to believe you could stay in the past with Carter and not here in the present with us. And I have to say it, Steve. That doubt is on you. Because at some point, you should have used your words and told him he was worth everything you’d given up for him.”

“Buck knew I was coming back. That was the plan. You all knew it.”

“Steve, I heard you. He told you he was going to miss you, and instead of reassuring him, you just said everything would be okay. What he needed to hear was you were going to come back to him. To us.”

Steve stood up and stalked over to the bay windows to look at the darkening sky. He folded his arms over his chest. His shoulders were hunched up. A defensive posture, while at the same time not trying to take up too much space. Sam had never noticed it before, not until Bucky had mentioned Steve’s insecurities, but he saw it now. 

“I was always different, you know? Always sick. Always small.”

Steve was facing away from Sam, who could just barely hear him. But Sam wasn’t going to interrupt Steve now that he finally started to open up.

“At first, I had my mom. It was just the two of us, but it was okay. And then, one day, there was Bucky. But I never quite felt like I had him, you know. There was always part of me that felt like maybe I was a charity case to him. Because why would someone as amazing as him wanna hang around with someone like me.” 

Sam could hear the pain in Steve’s voice as he went on. “Then there was Peggy, and she liked me well enough. She seemed to like the same things in me that Buck always said he did. So I started to feel like maybe I was someone people could love. Like I was worth their time. And then the serum made me into someone _everyone_ wanted a piece of, and I started doubting people’s motives. But not Peggy, not Bucky. I felt like they knew the real me and liked what they knew.”

Steve walked back towards him. Sam managed to not react to the unprecedented amount of anguish on his face. “You know the first time I ever asked Bucky for anything? It was when I asked him to stay in the war. I’d just gotten there and fighting by his side was a dream come true for me, and look where it got him, Sam. Deep down, I knew if I asked him to stay, he would, and what kind of person does that make me? Because look what his friendship and loyalty and love got him. And I’d thought his death was awful, but what happened to him was worse than death, and that’s on me.”

Sam desperately wanted to reach out to comfort his friend, but getting Steve Rogers to talk about his feelings this openly was almost as much of a miracle as bringing him back from the Soul World. He gave Steve a sympathetic smile and let thoughts of Riley play across his face. Steve saw and understood, as Sam knew he would.

“So, maybe I don’t let people get close. Maybe I don’t want them to, because this? Is this someone worth knowing? Worth caring about?” Steve shook his head. “All of you follow me into battle, and I do care for you, but I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve any of you, and I certainly don’t deserve him.”

Steve collapsed back on the sofa. “Instead of building connections, I just keep waiting for people to leave. Thanos channeled my worst fears, and he didn’t even know how deeply he defeated me. I watched Bucky fall, I watched him turn to dust… I couldn’t even look for him on the battlefield when you all showed up because I knew if I did, he’d fall again. Nat, Tony… it was all just a matter of time.”

Sam finally spoke, knowing Steve had admitted so much more in the last few minutes than in all the years they’d known each other. “That’s your fear talking, Steve. That, combined with the dangers in this work we do… of course, people are going to leave us, but not because they want to. None of us have ever left you because we wanted to.”

“I know that, Sam, I do. Intellectually, at least. But not in my gut.”

“Not that you’ve ever listened to my advice about this before, but therapy would do you a lot of good.”

Steve rested his head on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. “Think Bucky will talk to me again if I go to therapy?”

Sam boggled. For years, he’d broached the idea of therapy with Steve. Yet three days of Bucky not speaking to him had made Steve open to the idea. “You need to do therapy for you, but I do know it would make Barnes happy if you were happy **.”**

“Alright, Sam. I’ll do it.”

Sam exhaled deeply. “I’m proud of you. I think it’ll do you a lot of good.” Then, to lighten the mood, Sam added, “So, is Barnes really all that?”

Steve opened his eyes and looked directly at Sam. “Rude.”

“I mean, if he can finally get you into therapy…” Sam laughed. “Hey, I’ve gotten to know the newer version, and he’s not bad, but tell me about the Bucky Barnes you knew when you were kids.”

Steve immediately launched into some stories from his youth: how he met Bucky, the times he defended Steve and looked after him after his mother had died. Funny stories, sad stories, charming stories. Sam filled with emotion, watching Steve glow with his love for Bucky. 

“So, how long have you been in love with him?”

This caught Steve off guard. “What?”

“C’mon, Steve. I know you love me. You loved Nat and Tony and Wanda and the rest of the team. But this? This is different.” Sam softened his voice. “And it’s okay to admit it.”

For a few moments, Steve looked anywhere but at Sam. He clutched a throw pillow close, and his lips trembled a bit. Sam appreciated the struggle. Steve must be wrung out with emotion. 

“How do you know you’re in love with someone if you’ve needed them like water or air or food for as long as you remember? When he was such a part of me that his loss left me dead inside?” Steve smiled softly, a blush on his cheeks. “But when I specifically first said to myself that I was in love with him? I was sixteen years old.”

“When was that?”

“1934.”

Same as Bucky’s answer. Sam wondered if the revelation had hit them both at the same time, prompted by the same event. Curiosity got the better of him. He wasn’t close enough to Bucky to ask, but he figured it was worth a shot to ask Steve while he was in a talkative mood. 

“What made you realize it?”

“You know I was sick a lot. And my ma was a nurse, so sometimes she wasn’t around, but Bucky watched her closely so he knew what needed to be done.” A dreamy quality came over Steve’s face as he spoke. “This time, it was an asthma attack. I had an early version of an inhaler, which I preferred over the asthma cigarettes when we could afford the solution. Bucky made sure I used it, then he sat on the bed next to me, rubbing my back and breathing steadily. I matched my breaths to his and breathing got easier, and I thought to myself _if he ever stops breathing, I will, too._ That’s when I knew.”

Sam waited quietly while Steve sat with his memories for a few moments. “Then he died. And I died, too.” Steve looked directly at Sam. “I mean Steve Rogers died. Captain America had to keep on living.”

“Until he had a chance to die, too?”

Steve avoided the question by continuing as if Sam had never asked it. “Then Bucky was alive, and I felt like Steve again. And then he died, and I died, too.”

Sam began to argue that nobody could possibly have coped well with fifty percent of the world disappearing, but stopped when Steve held up his hand. “I know what you’re going to say, but I’m not proud of how I behaved during those five years. I was just a husk, a Captain America facade around a howling, angry void. I gave up, Sam. I let Nat down, I stayed away from the Compound, couldn’t even talk about you or Bucky or anyone I’d lost. I told the public it was okay to move on, I told Nat I couldn’t move on, but in reality, I just retreated.” Steve covered his face with his hands. “I think I took the mission to return the Stones to run away from all of you so I wouldn’t lose you again. And look what happened.”

Sam still had his valid reasons to be upset with Steve, but the results of his decision weren’t entirely bad. “Steve, you may not have created a timeline where Bucky was rescued in the 1940s and lived a normal life. But in this one, you broke through all the brainwashing and the torture. You brought him back to himself. Gave him a chance at a future. The question is, are you a part of that future?”

There was no hesitation from Steve in his answer. “If he wants me, yes.”

“Then you have to be the one to take the risk, okay?” Sam reached out and patted Steve’s knee reassuringly. “But first, you need to heal from your own traumas. You owe it to yourself and to Barnes. He has worked so hard to remake himself into a whole person after all that has been done to him.”

“I know. We’re both so broken.”

Sam was adamant in putting a stop to that train of thought. “But you’re not. You complete each other, but it’s not because you’re broken and fit where your sharp edges meet. It’s because your strengths and weakness complement each other.”

Steve hummed in thought. “I guess they always have.”

“Barnes deserves you to be whole person, too, not some sort of project to work on. Take care of yourself before you go to him. Then you can take care of each other, the way you always have.”

Steve groaned. “But how long can I expect him to wait? There is so much to be done in the recovery effort.”

It occurred to Sam that Steve might not have been brought fully up to speed on his situation. “Steve, you’re dead.”

“What?”

Sam fought down the urge to laugh at the expression on Steve’s face. “State funeral and everything. The whole world knows I’m Captain America now because you died saving half of the universe. You’ve got nothing but time.”

Steve seemed offended. “But I can’t just do nothing.”

“Oh, I know. I get it. But you have plenty of time to figure out what you want to do, what your new role, your new life can be.”

“I don’t have to be Captain America anymore?” Sam watched as comprehension dawned in those eyes. Then, Steve let out a pained sob. “Oh, god.”

Steve cried, ugly and sloppy and probably long overdue. Sam moved to hold him close. “Cry it all out.” Sam kissed the top of Steve’s head. “Just cry it all out.”

Eventually Steve pulled backfrom Sam’s arms and wiped his face. As he opened his mouth to speak, Sam stopped him. “Don’t you dare apologize.”

“How about a thank you?”

“I’ll accept that.”

“Then, thank you.”

The two men silently watched the sunset through the large windows opposite the sofa.

Steve said, in a low voice as if speaking to himself. “I was never even supposed to live past thirty.”

“We’re all glad you did.” 

Steve looked at Sam, trepidation in his eyes. “There was a time, in those five years you were gone, I wasn’t very glad of it myself.”

Sam squeezed his shoulder. “That’s a start, man. That’s a start.”

“Thanks.” Steve sighed. “For everything. Let me make you dinner before you head back?”

“By make, you mean…”

“… heating up pre-prepared meals that Pepper had stocked in the freezer.”

“In that case, I’m starving.”

“Ugh, you’re the worst.”

Sam and Steve worked together to get dinner on the table. Steve microwaved two lasagnas while Sam set the table and decanted a red wine. “Must be good if it’s from Tony’s cellar, right?”

“Only the best for Tony Stark.” They raised their glasses, and Steve added, “May he rest in peace.”

Sam made it about halfway through his meal before bringing up a question that had been bothering him. “What made you willing to risk the timeline with that extra jump?”

“Besides my century-long friendship and undying love?” Steve sounded amused.

“Besides that.”

“You’re one of the few people in the world, thank god, who know what it’s like to watch their best friend fall to their death, right beside them. And I’m sorry you ever had to know that feeling.”

Sam closed his eyes and visualized Riley’s smiling face instead of him falling, a trick he’d perfected over the years to deal with the never-ending pain of his loss.

“Bucky didn’t die, though. And there are still days when he wishes he had. He has to live in the world he was forced to create. All because he turned down an honorable discharge to stay by my side.”

“He doesn’t blame you, Steve.”

“I know, but I do. I had to take that chance.”

“If you could, would you do it again?”

“I don’t know.”

Sam was surprised at that. And his face must have shown that, because Steve explained, “It didn’t work. And I compromised Peggy and her career and this whole timeline all on a gut instinct.”

“Your gut instincts have been pretty good over the years.”

Steve merely shrugged.

“Would you do it to save Nat and Tony?” Sam forestalled the obvious question by saying, “If it was an option?”

“This world would be better off with Nat and Tony in it, so yeah.” Steve scrubbed his hand through his hair. “It sounds silly, I know, but I tried to reach out in the Soul World for them. I couldn’t sense either of them. I don’t know if going to Vormir would help.”

“Wakanda has the technology to go back in time.”

Steve was shocked at first, then contemplative. “Now I know why you asked.”

“Yeah.”

“So, what’s the plan, Cap?”

Now it was Sam’s turn to be shocked. He realized he’d been hoping Steve would tell him what was the right thing to do. Deep down, he’d been depending on Steve to give him advice. And Sam knew Steve would, if asked, but he also respected Sam as his own person. Sam had always appreciated that about Steve, even if he was still unsure about his new role as Captain America.

“I think…” Sam hesitated, trying to formulate what he truly believed to be the best course of action. “I’d recommend we stay the course. Keep working on the recovery. The time machine will still be there, and maybe we can have a broader discussion with the team, particularly Shuri, T’Challa, Bruce, and Helen, about the possible ramifications of saving Nat and Tony. And, of course, I’d never do anything to save Tony without Pepper’s knowledge. But it has to be a deliberate, well-thought-out plan with limited collateral impacts, as much as I’d love to have Nat back.” Sam choked up on those last words.

Sam blinked away a few tears, and when he looked up, Steve was looking right back at him, his eyes glowing with affection and admiration.

“You know, Sam, you’re going to be a better Captain America than I ever was.”

Sam brushed him off. “No way. I can only hope to be half as good as you.”

“No, really.” Steve insisted. “I was built to be a weapon, at a time when a weapon is what we needed most. You are an effective leader, you understand the nature of people and society, and you are a healer. You are the Captain America we need right now.”

Sam felt a weight lift from him. Once they’d rescued Steve, he’d been considering his role as Captain America to be temporary up until this instant. Not that it would have been an insult to return to being the Falcon, but with these months of experience behind him, he understood more the symbolism of Captain America. How the symbol meant so much to so many people. How him holding the shield could cause the symbol to mean even more. As he sat there, next to Steve, Sam recognized giving up the shield would have been a relief, but it would have also meant giving up the opportunity to become the Captain America he knew he could be. 

“More wine?”

“Sure, thanks.”

As Steve walked back into the kitchen to refill their glasses, Sam watched his friend. Steve Rogers was the world’s first super soldier, but he wasn’t invulnerable. His burden was that he thought he was. Sam knew he had to do things differently than Steve. He had to take care of himself, because he didn’t have the serum to help him heal. He had to delegate tasks, to trust his team to do their jobs, so he could do his. And he had to learn how to carve out a life for himself, because being Captain America wasn’t enough. Not for Steve Rogers, and certainly not for Sam Wilson.

Steve presented Sam with a wine glass and took his seat. Sam raised his glass and said, “To Captain America.”

“To Captain America.”

As they clinked their glasses together, secure in the knowledge he had Steve, Bucky, and his team behind him, Sam could finally see the Captain America he wanted to be.


	13. Chapter 13

In the end, all it takes is for a postcard with a date, time, and set of coordinates written in Bucky’s handwriting to show up to the Avengers Compound. Bucky sat in a coffee house in central California overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The cafe was fairly quiet, it being off-season and the midday rush having just abated. He had a hot chocolate piled with whipped cream in front of him and a chai latte across from him, having sat down just a few minutes before.

“Hey, Bucky.”

“Steve.” Bucky looked up at him and saw the nervousness written all over his body, the distinct fear of rejection. He took pity and quickly stood up to hug Steve. 

And who was Bucky trying to fool anyway? He needed to hold Steve the same as he needed to breathe air. He could remain burrowed in Steve’s arms forever, and from the way those strong arms wrapped around Bucky, Steve felt the same way. Bucky pulled away reluctantly, gesturing for Steve to sit.

Steve dropped his duffle bag by his chair as he sat down. He took a sip from the mug and smiled appreciatively. “Thanks, Buck.” He looked at Bucky through his ridiculously long lashes, as if afraid to look directly at him. “You look good.”

“You, too.” Bucky greedily drank in the sight of Steve, who once again had the longer hair and beard he’d worn when visiting Bucky in Wakanda. He was wearing his brown leather jacket over a red t-shirt and blue jeans. Steve seemed healthy and put together, and Bucky hoped Steve found him to appear much the same.

“Not worried about being recognized?”

“Turns out nobody is looking for ya when they think you’re dead. Anyway, there’s another Cap for people to focus on now.”

The hot chocolate soothed Bucky, who was very nervous now Steve was in front of him. There was so much he needed to say, but he also wanted just to enjoy Steve’s presence after missing him for so long. Small talk. Bucky could remember how to make small talk, right?

“How was your trip?” Perhaps not the most scintillating question, but Bucky knew Steve was as nervous as he was and would play along.

“Fine. Flew into Monterey with Sam, who says hi.Dropped me off here before heading up to San Francisco to see Lang and Van Dyne and hopefully a new recruit.”

“New team member?”

“Yeah.” Steve took another sip of his latte. “I don’t know if you’ve met her, but Danvers has a partner named Maria Rambeau. She was Air Force. Her daughter, Monica, is possibly interested in joining the team.”

“Well, if she’s right for the team, Wilson will know. He’s a good judge of character.”

Steve hummed his agreement, but didn’t say anything. Sam seemed a safe topic for now, though, so Bucky asked, “How is Wilson?”

“Getting really good with the shield.”

“And Ms. Potts?”

“She told me to send her love, and Morgan is demanding you visit and have ice cream with her.”

Bucky smiled at the memory of the little girl. Steve flicked a packet of raw sugar at him. “Seems like you charmed both Pepper and Morgan.”

“Pepper has been really good to me, and Morgan is an easy kid to get along with.”

“You were always good with kids. Your sisters adored you… most of the time.” Steve paused, going somewhere in his memories. “You were a good big brother.”

Thoughts of his sisters were always bittersweet for Bucky. But he knew Steve had loved them, been as much a brother to them as Bucky had been. “They loved you, too.” He cleared his throat and brought them back to the present. “Have you seen anyone else?”

Steve shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Just a few others. Fury, Wanda, Sharon, Maria… they all dropped by the cabin. I called T’Challa and Shuri.” He ducked his head shyly. “Regular in-home visits with a therapist.”

Bucky was grateful Steve had mentioned that last item. Sam had told him about Steve finally seeking help, but Bucky didn’t know if Steve would be comfortable mentioning it to him. “I’m glad you haven’t been on your own.”

“How about you?” Steve turned those earnest eyes on Bucky. “Have you been alone these past few months?”

“Yeah, but I don’t mind.” Well, that wasn’t completely true. “Missed you, though, punk.”

“Missed you, too, jerk.”

The two men drank in silence for a few moments. There was so much to say, so much that needed to be out in the open. It was overwhelming. Luckily, Steve decided to be as bullheaded and determined about this as any other battle he ran into. 

“It kind of hurts that everyone thought I’d just abandon them. That I’d stay in the past and not care about what happened to any of you.”

Bucky had known this would haunt Steve and had tried to come up with a way to explain it to him. “Your team loves you. Nobody would begrudge you trying to find some happiness. It’s just that nobody is close enough to you to know that choice wouldn’t have made you happy.”

“Even you?”

Bucky’s laugh was self-deprecating, and perhaps a little bitter. “I don’t know if you’re aware, Rogers, but my mind has kinda been fucked with over the years. It made more sense that you’d be with Peggy if you had the chance, rather than stick around with someone like me, because…” Bucky stopped there, because Steve knew all the reasons Bucky didn’t think he was worthy of Steve’s or anybody’s friendship. “Anyway, your happiness has meant everything to me for as long as I can remember.”

“Didn’t seem that way to me these past few months.” Steve sighed before continuing, “Sorry. Sam told me I had to get my shit together before I could see you again so…”

“You’re listening to Wilson now?”

“Well, he is Captain America.”

Bucky chuckled, as Steve had intended him to do. He waited patiently while Steve spun the mug between his hands where they were resting on the table. Steve furrowed his brow the way he’d done since he was a kid while he was struggling with what to do or say next. “I have more sympathy now for what you were feeling. The doubt, I mean, about what was real, about your memories… about me. My time in the Soul World didn’t go by in an instant. I was kinda conscious? Talking it through with my therapist made me realize I’d been that way in the ice, too. And after I woke up, it was like I was only ever partially awake and nothing was ever quite real. Like everything could just disappear.” He lifted the mug and held it to his cheek. “Still hate the cold.”

“I love the cold.” Bucky explained, “Being in cryo meant I wasn’t hurting anybody and nobody was hurting me. Took Wakanda to make me enjoy being warm again.”

“So, you mean there is hope for me to like the cold again?”

“There is still hope for you, Rogers.” Bucky prodded Steve’s foot with his own under the table. “Always.”

Steve kept his foot nestled against Bucky’s. “Did you ask Sam if I was in good enough shape to see you?”

“Nah. I’d never ask him to violate your trust like that. He just let me know you were doing okay.”

“So, why did you decide to reach out to me now?”

“I needed time to deal with…” Bucky placed his hands over his face for a moment. The urge to not let Steve see his pain was strong, but he owed it to both of them to be honest. He dropped his hands and let the hurt show. “Loki, as you, said he’d lived in the past without altering it. That he… you… let Hydra keep me all those years.”

“Bucky, no.” Steve sounded horrified. “I’d never…”

“Look, I know that, I do, but… all the evidence was there.” Bucky quickly wiped a tear away. 

“May I tell you why I really went to the past? Because you think you know, but you don’t.”

Bucky looked at Steve, those eyes so sincere. He nodded his permission.

“Bruce told me this timeline would be preserved as long as I returned the Stones when and where they were taken from. But I’d grabbed an extra vial of Pym particles in 1970 because I figured something would go wrong at some point, so I had enough to make an extra jump.”

Bucky knew what Steve did with that opportunity. “You went to see Peggy.”

“Yeah. But not to live a life with her. I went to try to save you.”

Bucky began to tremble. Steve reached across the table to hold his hand. “I gave her your location, and mine. If she rescued you, she could rescue me, but only if she got you out.”

The denied Vladivostok mission request. The six month delays in Carter’s life. She’d tried to save him. “But she wasn’t allowed to find me.”

“And she kept her promise to leave me in the ice.” Steve gripped his hand hard. “So I’d be there for you whenever you needed me.”

If Steve hadn’t been holding his hand, Bucky would have flown out of his chair. This much devotion, he couldn’t handle it. He didn’t deserve it. He couldn’t believe Steve had taken such a risk. Leaving his own damned self under the ice. “Jesus, Steve.” 

“I just wanted there to be a timeline when you weren’t suffering, Buck. When I could save you from being turned into a killer.”

“The US Army turned me into a killer first.” Bucky held Steve’s hand between both of his. “I still have nightmares from the war. And I know you do, too.”

“But you were tortured and used for so long.” Steve was quietly weeping now. “I’ll always blame myself for not saving you.”

“I know, I know.” 

“And I fucked it all up…”

“But you helped, too.”

Steve looked up questioningly. 

“The denied request to go to Vladivostok helped establish the validity of materials Pepper and Stark found after Siberia. Pepper and her lawyers used that information to get me a pardon as the longest held POW in our history.” Bucky fought down the queasiness that always plagued him when talking about the betrayal by his own country. “My name was cleared after it became apparent SHIELD knew I was in captivity since the Forties. You restored my name, Steve.”

Steve appeared astonished. “I didn’t realize it’d made a difference. I just wanted to save you.”

“But you had already saved me, more than you can ever possibly know.” Bucky’s voice broke. “I knew you when I knew nothing else. Or, at least, I thought I did.”

“And that’s why it was so hard for you when you thought I stayed in the past.” Steve understood now.

Bucky let Steve’s hand go and brushed his tears away. “This past year was a roller coaster ride for my brain and my heart, Steve. I needed time to feel stable again.”

Steve wiped away a few tears of his own. “But you were gone for five years, not to mention ever since that fucking train…”

The two discreetly regained their composure in the quiet cafe. After a few minutes, Bucky sniffed and said, “I asked you to come here because I missed you so damned much, Stevie.”

Steve’s smile shone like the sun. “I missed you, too, Buck.”

Bucky smiled back and teased, “Look at us, twenty-first century men working on our shit.”

Steve raised his mug. “Here’s to us, twenty-first century men working on our shit.”

They clinked their mugs and finished off their drinks.

Bucky felt like the weight of the world, hell, the whole universe had been lifted from his shoulders. They’d had their first difficult conversation, and it was okay. He wasn’t naive enough to think it was over. There was plenty more talking that needed to be done. But they’d passed the first hurdle without tripping up. 

To be fair, Bucky had always known he and Steve would work things out, in one way or another, but it was a relief nonetheless. “Speaking of working on our shit, wanna see what else I’ve been working on?”

Steve grinned.

Bucky tilted his head down towards Steve’s duffle bag and stood up. “Follow me.” 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thanks to [ NurseDarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NurseDarry/pseuds/NurseDarry) for being kind enough to beta this story. 
> 
> There is a beautiful piece of art by [em_dibujsb](https://www.patreon.com/em_dibujsb) in this final chapter. I think she captured the scene to perfection.
> 
> And much love and gratitude to all of you for reading this work. Every hit, comment, kudos, bookmark, subscription… they all meant the world to me. I was devastated by the characterization of Steve Rogers in Endgame and its impacts on Sam and Bucky, so I gave myself the challenge to fix it using what we knew was available: _Wandavision_ , _Loki_ , and _The Falcon and the Winter Soldier_. I hope you have enjoyed the result.

After a lovely stretch on the Pacific Coast Highway, Bucky drove Steve up the mountain road to a cabin. The two-story home was on the mountain side of the highway, high enough to have a wonderful view of the ocean and enough distance from tourists and locals alike. The cabin was built out of western red cedar, with dark blue trim. There were solar panels on the sloped, south-facing roof and a rain barrel alongside the small garage/workshop. The front porch ran the length of the building, and native plants surrounded the whole cabin.

“Wow.” Steve seemed charmed when he exited the car.

“Suits that whole lumberjack look you got going right now.”

“Jerk.”

Bucky unlocked the front door and waved Steve in. Steve dropped his duffle bag in the entryway and kicked off his muddy boots. Bucky also took off his shoes and hung his and Steve’s jackets on the hooks near the door. He held back, watching Steve nose about the living room. 

Steve first was distracted by the books on the coffee table **.** Gardening and science fiction. He smiled at Bucky and then ran his hand along the mantel above the large fireplace. His hand paused at a frame holding two portraits, the ones Steve himself had drawn of the Barnes sisters and of his mother, Sarah. After shooting a quick, questioning glance at Bucky, Steve assessed the rest of the room. Upholstery and curtains were in shades of green, from dark forest to sea foam, complementing the trees seen through the large windows. He strode over to the kitchen, which was completely open to the living room. He located the appliances, rested his hands on the marble countertops, used his hands to estimate the dimensions of the kitchen island, and smelled the herbs growing in the window box.

Tremulously, Steve said, “Bucky?”

“You wanna see the rest?”

The guest room with an adjacent bathroom was on the first floor with the living room and the kitchen. It was furnished with a king-sized bed and a heather grey sofa, both draped in muted red blankets. There were matching red window treatments and throw rugs on the hardwood floors. The bathroom was bright and modern with storage for linens and toiletries. Both rooms were pristine, ready to use, but showing no signs of having been used.

Steve said, “The master bed and bath are upstairs.”

It wasn’t a question.

Bucky followed Steve up the stairs.

The master suite took up the entire second floor. More of Steve’s sketches and paintings decorated the room, with its color scheme of navy blue and light grey. Large windows let in an abundance of natural light. There was a fireplace and two chairs with throw blankets arranged in front of it. The bathroom had a large marble shower stall, a jetted tub, and a vanity with two sinks. The bed had a skylight above it.

“How did you do all this in just a few months?”

Bucky couldn’t help the gentle exasperation in his voice. “Stevie, I’ve been working on this on-and-off since the Return.”

“But…” Steve appeared completely unmoored as he waved his hands the room around him. “This… this is the home we designed.”

Bucky stepped closer to Steve, looking directly into his eyes. “I had to be ready. Because the way I saw it, I had two choices. I could make my peace with your decision and bring you home with me to live out your last years or…” 

Steve was seldom one for patience. “And the other choice?”

For the first time that day, Bucky let his tears flow freely. “I could never really believe you’d leave me behind like that. That you decided we had reached the end of the line.”

Suddenly Bucky was enveloped in Steve’s strong arms. He cried into Steve’s neck and felt his right shoulder grow damp with Steve’s tears. Steve carded his fingers through Bucky’s long hair, and Bucky clung to him, digging his fingers in Steve’s back, realizing how touch-starved he’d been ever since Thanos had snapped him away.

Bucky didn’t know how much time had passed, but Steve’s repeated whispers of _thank you_ required a response. He pulled away slightly so Steve could witness his sincerity. “I’ll never give up on you, Steve. No need to thank me. It’s just the goddamn truth. Even the universe seems to have stopped trying to separate us.”

That earned a smile from Steve. “Damned right.”

Bucky grabbed some tissues from a box on one of the nightstands. He handed one to Steve. “Let’s head back down. I could use a drink.”

They shared a bottle of wine neither of them could really feel while sprawled on the sofa, their legs tangled together. Their glasses finally empty, Steve asked, “Should I take the guest room?”

Bucky’s heart started to pound. This conversation had been waiting a long time to happen. “That depends, are you leaving or are you staying?”

“What do you want?”

Bucky huffed out a sad laugh. “I built our home, Steve.” He sat up, and Steve mirrored his pose, side-by-side with their thighs touching. “What I want is all around you.”

Steve gently placed his hand on the back of Bucky’s neck, and Bucky let Steve draw him close until their foreheads touched. “Then I’m staying. Because you, Buck, you’re my home.”

Bucky breathed out the only word etched deep in his bones. “Steve.”

They remained like that until Bucky built up the courage to ask the next big question. It wouldn’t be fair to make Steve do all the work. “Sharing the bed, like we did in Wakanda?”

Steve bit his lower lip as he looked up at Bucky through those long lashes of his. Bucky’s heart skipped a beat or two. Steve said, “I’ve never slept as well as I do when I’m with you. Must be all those years of you nursing me through the night.”

“Never minded taking care of you.” Bucky’s cheeks warmed as he whispered, “Sometimes I think I can only sleep with you next to me.”

Steve nodded, a silent acknowledgement of the nightmares he knew visited them both. Then Steve said, “Did you ever think…”

Bucky sucked in a nervous breath. “Hmm?”

“Did you ever think about us, you know, _not sleeping_ in the bed?”

“You mean being awake? Sleeping in a tent?” Bucky asked, slyly. He wasn’t the only one blushing, at least.

“No, you jerk, I mean…“ Steve groaned in frustration. “Bucky, do you want me like that?”

Bucky decided to put Steve out of his misery and give him an answer, no matter what Steve might feel in response. “I’ve wanted you since I first understood what it meant to want.”

Steve giggled. Bucky sensed his relief because he felt it, too.

“I love you so much, Buck.”

“I love you, too, Steve.”

And they’d said the words before, of course, they had, but never like this. Never with all the ways a man could love another man embedded in the meaning. Steve’s gaze dropped to his mouth as he leaned slightly towards Bucky, whose heart hurt to stop him. “Steve, I just need to say…”

Bucky couldn’t get the rest of the words out, just a whimper. In response, Steve drew their foreheads together again as Bucky found his bearings. “It’s okay, Buck. We’ve got time. But you can tell me anything. _Anything._ ”

“I know. Sweetheart, I know. It’s just… this body…” Bucky paused, visions of torture and punishment and experiments flittering through his mind. He fought them away with the memories of Wakanda. Of the brief, competent, yet impersonal touches of its doctors and the gentle hands of its children braiding his hair. He finally forced out, “This body hasn’t known much kindness.”

Bucky watched as Steve pushed down his anger, his guilt, over everything Bucky had endured. Then, after a moment, a grim smile appeared on his face. “Captain America has been offered a lot of kindness over the years. But Steve Rogers? Not so much.”

Bucky replied with a smile of his own, one full of love for the man facing him. “Guess it’s good I’ve always been an expert in taking care of you.”

Steve gently rubbed his hands up and down Bucky’s arms. A light, careful touch, but it didn’t make Bucky feel delicate or fragile. Steve made him feel treasured.

Bucky ran his right hand over Steve’s beard. The texture was softer than it appeared, and Bucky scratched his nails back through it until he tipped Steve’s chin up. “May I?”

“Please.”

Love and comfort filled Bucky’s heart, and the moment felt as right as holding out a hand in friendship to a scrawny little boy in Brooklyn a century ago. Their first kiss was quick and chaste. It left them both smiling and in tears.

Bucky stood. “C’mon, I haven’t shown ya the backyard yet.” 

Steve’s eyes lit up as Bucky grabbed his hand and hauled him up. “I believe there is a place out there you’d like to see.”

Behind the cabin and separated from it by a short distance was a smaller building with a northern wall composed solely of windows. An easel and a drawing desk were visible within. Steve emitted a tiny cheer and sped ahead, with Bucky strolling more leisurely behind him. He wanted Steve to have a few minutes to himself before entering the space Bucky had created for him.

By the time Bucky entered the studio, Steve was rummaging through the assembled selection of acrylics, watercolors, pencils, and charcoals. “I hope you approve.”

“This is amazing.” Steve was grinning like he did when they’d gifted each other meager birthday presents in the past. “I know we’d talked about it, but this is better than I ever imagined.”

Bucky pointed to a door in the corner. “That’s a bathroom. This counter has electricity for an espresso machine or microwave or whatever you might want. There are sketchbooks and canvases in a variety of sizes in those cabinets. And that couch is mine, so I can keep you company while you work.”

“Can’t stay away?” Steve flirted, a hopeful lilt to his voice.

_Adorable_. Bucky felt himself smile helplessly in return. “Not when I finally have you to myself.” He walked over to the door of the studio and swept his arm towards the yard. “I have more to show you.”

Hand-in-hand, they strolled through the property. Bucky showed Steve how he’d cleared the brush to create a firebreak, and they decided to volunteer at the fire department together. Bucky also pointed out the deck on the second floor outside the master suite, the locker of firewood, the trailhead that would lead them up the mountainside. 

Steve stopped them at a particularly picturesque spot. “We should takea selfie **.** Send it to Sam.”

“He’ll be very smug about all this, you know.” Bucky rolled his eyes. “And Shuri, too.”

“Best to tell them now, like ripping off a bandage.”

Steve set the timer on his phone camera and held out his arm, while he put his other arm over Bucky’s shoulders. Right as the countdown ended, Steve playfully kissed Bucky’s cheek, causing him to laugh. Steve brought up the image, then covered his mouth, as if dismayed.

Bucky grabbed the phone away. “How bad could this photo possibly be?”

Tears immediately filled his eyes. The photo wasn’t bad at all. But what it showed was devastating. “We look happy. Oh, Steve, god, we’re happy.”

Their second kiss was longer than the first.

Eventually, arms around each other, they walked back towards the cabin. As they passed the planting beds, Bucky showed Steve how to pick ripe tomatoes, then they watched the sunset over the Pacific from a bench he’d built at the highest elevation on the property. Steve snapped a photo of the sunset, too, then sent it and their selfie to Sam and Shuri. No words necessary. 

After they went inside, Bucky tore some basil from the window box and prepared fresh tomato soup. He watched Steve as he moved around the kitchen, finding bowls and silverware in the first places he looked. Steve smiled each time, and Bucky was glad. He’d stocked the kitchen based on placements in their old Brooklyn apartment and their shared Wakandan flat. “Slice that loaf of sourdough, will ya?”

“Did you bake it?”

“No. But the bakery I buy it from is half the reason I picked this spot for our home.”

After dinner, they curled up under blankets on the sofa, _their_ sofa, and between sweet, increasingly confident kisses, they talked. Talked about how much Steve missed Tony and Nat, talked about Bucky choosing this location and building the cabin. Talked about the five years Steve spent thinking Bucky was gone forever, talked about the past year when Bucky thought the future he and Steve had planned was lost to him forever. They talked about their youth, the Howlies, their precious time getting to know each other again in Wakanda. 

Eventually, Steve yawned.

“Time for bed?” Bucky smiled as Steve yawned again.

“Yeah.” Steve reached for Bucky’s hand. They walked up the stairs, fingers entwined. 

They instinctively followed their established night-time routine, taking turns to use the bathroom although the vanity, tub, and shower stall could easily accommodate two retired super soldiers. Bucky appreciated the privacy, and he knew Steve needed a few moments alone to decompress. The emotions of the day had exhausted them both, but it was a good exhaustion. It felt like an accomplishment. 

Steve had thoughtfully placed glasses of water on each nightstand and had turned off all the lights except for the one on Bucky’s side of the bed. Because, yes, after decades of sleeping next to each other on-and-off, they remembered each others’ preferences. Steve remembered that younger Bucky usually read long into the night and, more recently, sometimes he needed to leave one light on to stave off the memories that haunted him. “Thanks, Stevie.”

Both had changed into their usual nightclothes, thin t-shirts and soft sleep shorts. Steve drew back the covers, but hesitated before getting in the bed. He caught Bucky’s eye, and Bucky recognized the challenge in that gaze an instant before Steve took off his shirt. Bucky had seen Steve shirtless before, of course, many times. Might have even been afraid of being caught staring, but couldn’t help himself. A desire to touch that Bucky learned to resist long before Steve took the serum. But tonight, for the first time, he was being invited to touch. The sort of cocky smile that had come so easily to him in his youth appeared on his face as he pulled off his own shirt. 

Bucky had never been shy about his body, but the scars had taken time for him to get used to. He concealed them when possible, but tonight he felt no discomfort. And the way Steve’s eyes hungrily roved over his chest mirrored how Bucky looked back at him. 

But Steve still didn’t get into the bed. Instead, one of his hands reached for the drawstring of his shorts, but paused. “I’m not going to say I don’t want you, but I’m not asking for anything to happen tonight. I just want…” 

The thought of curling up to Steve, skin-on-skin, appealed to Bucky. He reached for his own shorts, took them off, and crawled into the bed. “Come to bed, Steve.”

Steve hesitated, as if surprised Bucky went through with it. “I mean, there have been studies that show babies bond more quickly with…”

“Steven Grant Rogers, just admit you want some naked cuddling and get in here.”

With an undignified chuckle, Steve stripped and got under the covers. 

Bucky turned out the light. Illumination from the night sky filtered through the skylight. The open expression on Steve’s face made the pain of the past years seem far away. “You’re so beautiful, Steve.”

Steve reached out and caressed Bucky’s jaw. “You were always the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. So many sketchbooks full of you.”

It was hard to believe, that all those years Bucky had hidden his feelings, Steve was doing the same thing. “You really loved me all this time?”

Steve nodded as he ran his hand through Bucky’s hair. “Ma knew.”

A century old fear of disappointing Sarah Rogers flooded through Bucky. “What?”

“She guessed how I felt about you, and she said she thought you felt the same way.” Steve placed a soft kiss in the palm of Bucky’s vibranium hand. “She said she knew we’d have it rough, but it comforted her to know that when she passed I’d still have someone who loved me.”

Bucky sighed in relief. “Always.”

They settled into their preferred sleeping position, Steve’s head resting on Bucky’s chest. It was a habit established in their teenage years, Steve inhaling and exhaling with the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest, while Bucky rubbed his back to ease his breathing. 

Bucky kissed the top of Steve’s head. “Good night, sweetheart.”

“Good night, Buck.” Bucky felt a kiss on his shoulder as Steve nuzzled closer.

Steve almost instantly drifted off to sleep. He had known Steve was tired, but Bucky was also proud he still provided the safe haven this misunderstood man had always needed. He held Steve tightly and looked up at sky through the window above.

Bucky was pleased with his skylight design. There was a switch by the bed that could extend a thin shade, a blackout shade, or a wood panel to match the rest of the ceiling, so they could illuminate the room based on mood or weather. The cabin was high enough up the mountain to be above the marine layer much of the time, and tonight’s sky was clear and full of stars.

They had watched the stars together from summer-warmed rooftops in Brooklyn, embattled fields in Europe, a tranquil lakeside in Wakanda. But this was the first time they’d been under the stars together since they’d both been out amongst them.

“What’s so funny?”

Bucky hadn’t realized it, but he had started to giggle. He nudged Steve so his head remained on Bucky’s shoulder, but looking up. “Steve, see those stars? We’ve been out there.”

Steve let out a brief laugh of his own. “That’s still so hard to believe.”

“What are the odds, Stevie, that we would have been through so much? Lived through the Depression, fought in World War II, turned into super soldiers, spent most of the Twentieth century frozen, woke up in the future, traveled into space, and saved the universe. We are the only two people in the world, the only two who have ever lived to have shared these experiences.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to share these experiences with anyone else.”

“Really?” Because while he had only ever loved Steve, Bucky knew how much Peggy meant to him.

Steve turned over, throwing one leg over Bucky and looking down at him. He knew what Bucky was thinking because he said, “I loved Peggy, I think. I know I loved the idea of her. But you are the first person I ever loved, and you’ll be the last.”

Bucky allowed those words to assure him, and he parted his legs in invitation. Steve settled between them, but propped himself on his arms above Bucky, not touching, not moving. Starlight brightened the room enough to see the happiness in Steve’s smile and the love in his eyes. Bucky appreciated the thoughtfulness, the kindness Steve was showing to him. To be given the choice of how and when to be touched. 

Bucky waited for panic to overtake him, but instead of feeling suffocated, he felt free. Steve wasn’t a trap above him or a cage trapping him inside; instead, he was a shield.

Bucky placed one hand on Steve’s hip and the other on the back of his neck, pulling him down gently until their bodies were flush against each other. They lay there, unmoving, just sharing heat and closeness. The weight of Steve pressing him into the mattress was comforting, not constricting, making Bucky almost want to weep with gratitude. Steve had burrowed his face into Bucky’s neck, where he felt the contented sigh Steve exhaled as he settled heavier onto Bucky. 

This sensation of peace was a stranger to Bucky, who took a few moments to search his memories. Had he ever been this close to someone without violence? In truth, he could only remember huddling with Steve during cold winter nights, holding him through long illnesses, comforting each other in trenches. But the last time Bucky had been this close to someone, it’d been Steve high above the Potomac, trying to kill him, but deep down somehow knowing he didn’t want to. That last time, closeness brought fear with it.

At that thought, he flipped Steve over onto his back. He searched for a glimpse of fear on Steve’s face, their positions reminiscent of their fight on the helicarrier, so long ago. But all he saw on Steve’s face was happiness, desire, and anticipation, and maybe not a little bit of intrigue that Bucky could toss him around. Bucky lowered his body onto Steve’s and relaxed into his warmth. He smelled a scent as familiar as his own and smiled. 

And Bucky believed for the first time that maybe he could have this. That he could love and be loved, want and be wanted. That he could experience pleasure, maybe even deserve pleasure. That he could chase pleasure.

He placed a kiss on Steve’s shoulder and was rewarded by those strong arms around him. He placed a kiss higher up on Steve’s neck and felt Steve’s hands lower to his hips. Bucky shifted to bring a kiss to Steve’s lips, and the delicious friction of that motion elicited a gasp from Steve. A gasp which Bucky chased with his mouth. And after that, things got a bit frantic and clumsy, filled with laughter and encouraging murmurs. Steve’s hands in Bucky’s long hair. Bucky’s fingers in Steve’s mouth. Rough swipes of tongues, tender nuzzling of noses, heated scrapes of nails, soft moans of ecstasy.

Finally, they found themselves much as they started, albeit messier, stickier and even happier. Bucky was rubbing Steve’s back, while Steve entwined his fingers in Bucky’s hair. So many nights of ashamed wakefulness, wanting this in his youth. On the run after escaping from Hydra, trying to figure out if these thoughts were memories or unfulfilled dreams. During his recovery in Wakanda, knowing he’d loved Steve, but willing to accept whatever Steve would give him. And every damned night he thought his Steve was lost to him forever. Bucky couldn’t believe the best man he’d ever known wanted to be his lover, as well as his friend. And after all these years, decades of separation and suffering, they were alive together and didn’t have to hide their feelings away.

“We can have this. God, Bucky, we can have this.”

To hear Steve echo Bucky’s thoughts was a revelation in its own right. Bucky knew of Steve’s deep insecurities better than anyone, but he’d at least thought Steve knew he was worthy of love. At some point soon, they’d need to talk about the pain all the years of separation had caused. That they’d willingly died for each other, but needed to relearn how to live with each other. They’d need to get over years of being afraid to love each other openly and learn how to be partners, not just on the playground or the battlefield, but in life.

“I love you.” Steve whispered, as he nestled even closer.

Bucky reached for Steve’s hand and held it to his chest, so Steve could feel how Bucky’s heart was beating for him. “I love you, too.” 

As they clung to each other, Bucky pressed lingering kisses to Steve’s hair, his forehead, his temple. Yes, they’d need to make decisions about how they wanted to spend their future together. But for now, Bucky and Steve were going to spend the night in each other’s arms, certain in the knowledge they’d be there for each other in the morning.


End file.
